What Do Bed Bugs Look Like?

As a home or business owner in Florida, few things can be more distressing than having a bed bug problem. While bed bugs might not damage your property or spread forms of illness, they bring both physical and psychological risks. The impact of knowing you could be bitten as you sleep is not something that we can easily ignore. If you suspect you have bed bugs, they need to be identified.

To help differentiate between bed bugs and other pests in Florida, we want to run through a few things with you. Most importantly, what do bed bugs look like? Given we have fought bed bugs for years, we know how to check for bed bugs and identify them by their methods and actions.

Let us help you identify your bed bug problems so you know what to look out for. If you have a bed bug problem in Florida, you can contact us for immediate relief.

The good thing about bed bugs – one of the only positives, really – is they have a very particular look. Other pest problems in Florida tend to look quite alike, so it is easy to mistake one species with another. Bed bugs have a unique look within the insect kingdom.

Bed bugs have a small, flat body – most other bug species found indoors are rounder and have a less flattened-down look. These parasites can also feel distinct as they are ovular in shape, which is quite rare in the bug kingdom. Look at bed bug images, and you can usually spot how flat they are compared to other pests you might have dealt with.

Another feature to look out for when bed bugs are present is the casings they leave behind. As bed bugs age from being a nymph into an adult, they leave behind their old casings. They continue to do this until they reach full growth, so you might start noticing some unsightly translucent casings lying around your property. The casings will almost look like old, dead bed bugs until you inspect them close-up.

Generally, a bed bug is going to be something in the region of 4-5mm when they have reached full maturity. This puts them roughly in line with a seed you would find in most forms of seeded fruit, such as an apple. Smaller bed bugs are much harder to pick up with the human eye and usually require magnified inspection to spot. Fully-grown adult bed bugs, though, are easily spotted with the eye.

One problem you might notice when looking at bed bug pictures is that these pests seem to change color. In some photos, they appear in that reddish-brown hue that most of us expect to see.

Other times, though, they can be more tan in color or even translucent. More translucent-looking bed bugs tend to be nymphs. These are young bed bugs who have yet to feed for the first time.

Once they feed, they change color to the more reddish-brown color that we have come to expect from bed bugs. Even adult bed bugs who have not fed in a while will be a deeper brown shade in color. Once they feed again, though, the blood courses through their bodies, and they change in tone.

Spotting bed bugs involves knowing what they look like. It also revolves around being able to spot their patterns, such as the stains they leave, and looking out for bed bug molted skins and eggshells. Treating bed bugs involves using specific forms of treatment. Numerous options exist, from chemical and electric treatments to the preferred method of heat treatment.

Electric heating and chemical treatments have their use within the bed bug extermination industry. Compared to property-wide heat treatment, though, results are typically far less consistent and impactful. When you want to remove a bed bug infestation fully, you need something more powerful, like heat treatment, to be applied. You can read more about bed bug treatments here.

Rest assured that a specialist in bed bug treatments, like our team at BBE, can find the right method of treatment for you. As soon as we understand where your bed bugs are coming from, we can get to work on removing them as soon as possible. By using heat treatment, for example, we can wipe out all bed bugs in a Florida property—regardless of its size or scale of infestation—in one visit.

Now that you know how to identify bed bugs, it should be easier to know if you have bed bugs in Florida. Using the above, you can feel more confident about determining whether you have bed bugs or have another pest problem to contend with. If you have bed bugs, our Florida specialists can handle them for you. Contact us today to see how we can assist in removing your problem ASAP!