How to Locate Bedbugs

Bedbugs are found worldwide, and these parasites have been known to make themselves comfortable in homes, cinemas and hotels. If you should ever sleep in a hotel or motel for any length of time, check your room for signs of bedbugs since bedbugs can easily find their way into your suitcase and make their way into your home. According to the Milwaukee Department of Neighborhood Services, the number of cases of problems with bedbugs is increasing, so learn how to locate bedbugs to keep them out of your life.

Things You'll Need

• Large flashlight
• Small flashlight
• Magnifying glass
• Playing card
• Hair dryer
• Dog trained to locate bedbugs

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Instructions

• 1

  Locate bedbugs with the help of a flashlight. Look for bedbugs with your flashlight in narrow spaces in furniture and narrow openings in window and door frames. Use a flashlight to look inside furniture after taking out the drawers, and look inside holes where screws were inserted. If you are in a cinema, check for bedbugs before you sit down. Use a flashlight for better visibility. Shine the flashlight into narrow spaces in and around your chair. Use a small flashlight to avoid annoying anyone in the theater. Since bedbugs sometime dwell in electrical household items such as radios, computers and television sets, use a flashlight to see inside these items.

• 2

  Find bedbugs with a magnifying glass. Since bedbugs like to stay close to the humans they feed off of, check sheets for dark stains the size of the head of a pin, and check the sheets and the mattress for bloodstains resulting from trauma to the bugs. Look for stains from bedbug waste matter using your magnifying glass. Pick up the mattress and look for live bedbugs. Check mattress seams, in the bed's framework and in back of the headboard. Use your magnifying glass to look for white bedbug eggs and shells that are approximately 1 mm in size, and look for skins left behind by bedbug nymphs. Nymphs are immature bedbugs. Examine the clothes in your hamper with a magnifying glass.

• 3

  Use a card or a hair dryer to locate bedbugs. Slip a card from a deck of cards you own between narrow spaces in floors, and in spaces around baseboards. Sliding a card through spaces bedbugs can easily crawl into and hide in will drive bedbugs out and into the open. You can also force bedbugs out of their hiding places by blasting hot air into tight spaces with a hair dryer.

• 4

  Have a trained dog sniff out bedbugs. Dogs can be hired to locate bedbugs in houses and other types of living quarters and in medical institutions such as hospitals. Bedbug inspection performed by a trained dog is a fast way to locate bedbugs in one or more rooms.