Experts offer their best advice for dealing with bed bugs

“Encountering bed bugs is awful. The psychological stress is often the biggest problem,” says Bjørn Arne Rukke. He researches pests at the Norwegian Institute of Public Health.

“Bringing bed bugs home amounts to not only a small disaster, but your holiday can also be affected by anxiety and worry,” says Morten Portaas, head of the pest control company Rentokil Norway.

The two bed bug specialists met at a public event in August to give advice about bed bugs, both when you encounter them while travelling and when you have brought them home with you.

The best advice for dealing with bed bugs is to avoid them altogether.

Check the bed

The most important thing you can do is to thoroughly inspect your hotel room – as soon as you walk through the door.

“Take out your phone, turn on the flashlight and start looking for bed bugs or traces of them,” says Rukke.

The bed is the main thing that needs to be inspected.

“Check the underside of the mattress, especially under the fabric edge where the mattress cover is stitched in place. Also check the wood of the bed frame. If you find black spots there, they could be bed bug droppings,” says Rukke.

Small bloodstains on the sheets and mattress can also be a sign that the room is infested.

Check all hotel rooms

Place your suitcase as far away from the bed as possible. Rukke recommends keeping your clothes and belongings inside a closed suitcase.

“I never unpack,” he says.

If you spend ten minutes checking the bed and find nothing, you can be fairly confident that there are no bed bugs living in the room.

Rukke stresses that bed bugs are not just a problem in other countries.

“There are bed bugs in Norwegian accommodations too. You have to check there as well,” he says.

Change rooms

Rukke has found bed bugs in hotel rooms.

“It happened when I was attending a conference on bed bugs in Stockholm. I checked the room and found clear traces,” he says.

He went down to reception and told them there were bed bugs in his room.

“They said they didn't know anything about it, even though I also found drying powder on the underside of the mattress. But at least I got a new room – which I checked as well," Rukke says. “There was no signs of bed bugs there. That was good enough, and I felt reassured."

You wake up with bites

Bed bugs live in mattresses, cracks and other hiding places near the bed. They emerge when it gets dark, while you are sleeping.

They stick their long suction tube, called proboscis, through your skin, into a small blood vessel and suck blood for 5 to 15 minutes. Then they retreat to digest their meal.

But other insects bite too.

“You need to find out what actually bit you. For example, I know of children who woke up on holiday in southern Europe covered in bites. It turned out they were from mosquitoes,” says Rukke.

Check if mosquitoes are flying around the room or if you see other insects. You could also have bites from other small insects like fleas or red mites, although these are less common.

Typical places for bed bug bites are parts of the body that stick out from under the sheet or duvet while you sleep, such as your arms, legs, neck, or face.

People react differently to bed bug bites. Some don’t notice anything, while others experience itching and swelling similar to mosquito bites. Others have stronger allergic reactions.

Some people start itching right away. Others only feel itchy after a few hours or days.

If you have been bitten, you should check the mattress extra carefully. If you find black droppings or the bed bugs themselves, then you have been bitten by bed bugs.

There are bed bugs in your room

If you have bed bugs in your room, you should report this to the hotel reception and ask for a new room – or change hotels.

You should also check your luggage for bed bugs.

Female bed bugs that have recently fed on blood lay between five and ten eggs a week. They can lay eggs in your suitcase if it is kept near the bed, or on clothes and belongings that are scattered around.

Young bed bugs, called nymphs, or adult bed bugs may also have ended up in your suitcase.

“To detect bed bugs in your luggage, you need to carefully go through your clothing piece by piece. Also check other belongings and the suitcase itself. The eggs are hard to spot because they are only one millimetre in size, white, and they stick to objects,” Rukke explains.

If you find bed bugs or eggs on belongings, they can be placed in plastic bags that are tied shut to isolate the critters.

You plan to continue your travels

But can you continue on to the next hotel?

“The challenge with bed bugs is that they spread from place to place,” says Rukke.

Moving around is beneficial for the species.

“If they only stay in one place, the risk of being discovered and combated will be greater. If they disperse to new places in people’s luggage and establish themselves there in dark hiding spots, they have a better chance of avoiding being exterminated,” says Rukke.

He still does not have a clear answer as to whether you should end your trip if you suspect bed bugs.

The risk of spreading the insects further depends on how long the hotel room has had bed bugs.

“If a guest arrives at a hotel with a female bed bug in their suitcase, which then crawls out into the room, there is little risk that it will leave with the next guest in the room,” says Rukke.

If, on the other hand, the hotel room has had bed bugs for months, there will be far more of them present – and the risk of taking them with you is much greater.

The number of bites and the amount of evidence of bed bugs you find give an indication of the risk that you will carry them with you.

You’re about to catch the flight home

Will you infect your fellow passengers with bed bugs? Will they crawl from your jacket onto others?

Unlike head lice, bed bugs do not permanently reside in your hair or elsewhere on your body.

“They usually don’t want to be in the clothes you're wearing,” says Rukke.

Only in rare cases, for example in heavily infested apartments where bed bugs are crawling everywhere, would they choose to reside on clothes that people are wearing.

You land with bed bugs

You land at the airport with a suitcase that could contain eggs or bed bugs.

“Bed bugs are very good travellers, and they can tolerate our climate,” Stig A. Kristiansen from Rentokil said at the public event.

If you have travel, home, or household insurance that covers bed bugs, you can get help. If you are coming from abroad, a scheme is now available in Norway where you can hand over your suitcase for treatment.

“Contact your insurance company to find out if you have the right coverage, and then pest control companies can take over and freeze the suitcase,” said Morten Portaas from Rentokil.

Not everyone has a freezer at home that is large enough for one or more suitcases.

The insurance company Vis has created its own bed bug insurance.

“Even if you only suspect that you may have bed bugs, the insurance will cover freezing treatment,” says Linda Engen from Vis.

But what if you don't have insurance or don't know you're bringing bed bugs home with you?

You may have brought bed bugs home

There are two methods for treating luggage that contains bed bugs, according to Rukke.

The first option is to freeze it.

“If you have a large enough freezer, you can put the entire suitcase inside it and spread the contents so that everything cools faster,” he says.

Heat treatment is the other method.

Washing clothes at 60 degrees Celsius kills both eggs and bugs, but not all garments can withstand such a hot wash.

Washing at 40 degrees is not enough. Lab tests have shown that bed bugs die, but the eggs can survive.

You can also place infested luggage in a drying cabinet or a sauna. If the items are heated to 50 degrees Celsius, the bed bugs will die within a few hours.

If you do not have the possibility to freeze or heat-treat your luggage yourself, a pest control company can help you with this.

You’re not aware that you brought bed bugs home – and they spread

If you have brought eggs or bed bugs home in your suitcase, the bed bugs can establish themselves in your home.

If you have brought home an adult female bed bug, she can start a new colony. Females store sperm inside their bodies, so they do not need to mate again.

At the start of a new colony, bed bugs will stay close to where you sleep, preferably in your bed.

“You are their food, after all, and the key to their success in being able to lay eggs,” says Rukke.

A female can lay up to 200 eggs during the few months that she lives.

At room temperature and with a regular supply of blood, a new generation of bed bugs becomes sexually mature two months after you return home. They then begin to lay eggs themselves, contributing to a rapid increase in numbers.

Your home has become infested

A bed bug infestation can cause considerable psychological distress. Every year, just under 3,000 Norwegian homes have to be decontaminated, according to statistics from the Norwegian Institute of Public Health (link in Norwegian).

Morten Portaas at Rentokil has been involved in many treatments of infested houses and apartments.

“We often encounter desperation among what you might call the victims. Our employees have to be psychologists, family therapists, and health workers as much as they are pest control technicians. It often becomes a family crisis when a home has been invaded by bed bugs,” he said.

Linda Engen at Vis Insurance confirms that many of their customers are very scared.

“We’ve had cases where people wanted us to freeze their entire car simply because their suitcase had been in it,” she says.

Neighbouring apartments become infested

If you don't manage to stop the infestation in your apartment, the bed bugs can spread to neighbouring apartments.

In that situation, a pest control company should be brought in to assess how big the infestation actually is.

In most cases, it's best to let professional pest controllers handle the job of getting rid of the bed bugs, according to Rukke.

They can use various methods to get rid of bed bugs, such as cold treatment, heat treatment, steam, vacuuming, and drying powder. The choice of methods must be considered on a case-by-case basis.

If your apartment is infested, the neighbouring apartments should also be inspected to achieve building-wide control. If only one of several infested apartments is treated, there is a high risk that it will be reinfested from neighbouring apartments that were not treated.

Rukke is also concerned with removing the shame that comes with bed bug infestations.

“It's important that having bed bugs does not carry any social stigma. There's no reason for it to. You have simply been unlucky. It has nothing to do with the number of stars the hotel you stayed at had, or with personal hygiene. They are only after your blood,” says Rukke.

References:

Bed bugs and Skadedyrbekjempelse (Pest Control), Skadedyrhåndboka, Norwegian Institute of Public Health, 2026.

Naylor, R.A. & Boase, C.J. Practical Solutions for Treating Laundry Infested With Cimex lectularius (Hemiptera: Cimicidae) (Abstract), Journal of Economic Entomology, 2010. DOI: 10.1603/EC09288

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Translated by Ingrid P Nuse

Read the Norwegian version of this article on forskning.no

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