Bed bugs were once a common pest worldwide, but their incidence declined rapidly in the 1950s due to the use of organochlorin products.

Recently however, with the banning of organochlorins bed bugs have undergone a dramatic resurgence and worldwide there are reports of increasing numbers of infestations.

Currently in Australia, bedbugs are most commonly found in establishments providing accommodation, but it is not uncommon for bedbugs to be found in private homes especially if the occupants, or their guests, have been travelling. Bedbugs are transported with people’s luggage and clothing but not on the person.

Bed bugs are wingless insects, roughly oval in shape, 4-5mm long when fully grown, and are fast runners. They are rust brown in colour and change to a deeper red brown following a blood meal. Bedbugs can hide in narrow cracks and crevices, making detection often very difficult.

Bedbugs pass through an egg and five nymphal stages to become an adult. The nymphs and adults leave their harbourage to feed every 2-3 days.

during feeding, which has anticoagulant properties. Bed bugs are attracted to people as a host by the warmth and carbon dioxide we give off.

They tend not to live on humans so they make contact for a blood meal ' return to their harbourage. Most blood feeding occurs at night, and they generally seek shelter during the day and become inactive while digesting the blood meal.

Bedbugs can survive for long periods without feeding. If they have been starved for some time they will bite in the day. They feed for only 3-5 minutes in the hours prior to dawn and return to their harbourage. Their presence can be detected by the bites, dots of blood on the sheets, a sickly sweet odour and inspection of potential harbourages, looking for dried blood deposits around cracks in the bed, bedhead, bedside furniture and mattress.

Nymphs can survive a couple of months, adults more than a year, without a blood meal. A check of the life cycle shows it may be more than a month after someone left their bedbugs behind before complaints are received.

While a bedbug’s preferred host is human, they will feed on wide variety of other warm-blooded animals including rodents, rabbits, bats, and even birds.

Bed bugs shelter in a variety of dark locations, mostly close to where people sleep. These include under mattresses, floorboards, paintings and carpets, behind skirting, in various cracks and crevices of walls, within bed frames and other furniture, and behind loose wallpaper or flaking paint.

Bed bugs tend to stay in close contact with each other and heavy infestations are accompanied by a distinctive sweet sickly smell. Blood spotting on mattresses and nearby furnishings is often a tell tale sign of an infestation.

Skin reactions to bed bug bites are due to allergic reactions with the saliva injected by the insect during feeding. Accordingly not all people bitten will react to a bedbugs bite, but some will endure a great deal of discomfort often with loss of sleep from the persistent biting.

The most commonly affected areas of the body are the arms and shoulders. Reactions to the bites may be delayed; up to 9 days before lesions appear. Common symptoms include the development of large wheals, often larger than 1cm, which are red, itchy and inflamed. The wheals usually subside to red spots but can last for several days.

In India, iron deficiency in infants has been associated with severe infestations. It is possible that allergens from bed bugs may be associated with asthmatic reactions.

Generally, pesticides will need to be applied in conjunction with any non-chemical means of control. Good housekeeping practices and a reduction in possible harbourages such as cracks and crevices will discourage repeat infestations

As bed bugs are cryptic in their habits, complete control is often difficult to achieve with the first treatment. This is especially so with heavy infestations and thus a post treatment evaluation is always required.

The aim of the treatment by your PestCare technician is simple but must be thorough ' exhaustive.

All harbourages must be located, treated and eliminated. A harbourage is any crack that you can slide the corner of a piece of paper into – because bedbugs are paper-thin.

Bed linen: must be laundered using hot water ' dried in a hot clothes dryer mattress: treated with dry steam and pesticide. If the infestation is severe and blood spotting is heavy then the mattress will need to be discarded and replaced. bedhead: removed from the wall if attached, taken apart, treated, reassembled, gaps sealed, treat the wall behind the bedhead, replace ' seal edges furniture: take apart, treat, re-assemble, seal gaps.

Wall coverings: check for cracks in wallpaper and flaking paint, treat and seal. curtains and hangings: must be laundered using hot water and dried in a hot clothes dryer, check curtain rails also, may need to be removed and clean skirting: treat and seal flooring: treat and seal to eliminate cracks.

Any cane furnishings should be removed and discarded. It is not possible to treat these thoroughly with insecticide or heat due to the countless cracks and voids at the ties.