BEDBUG BRITAIN
Bedbugs feasted on our kids & cost us thousands – we stripped our homes bare & couldn’t sleep for weeks
PARIS is under attack from hordes of bedbugs, with lots of hotels, theatres and public transport services in the firing line.
But it is not just the French capital under siege, with the blood-sucking pests thriving here in the UK.
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Rentokil has seen a 65 per cent increase this year in calls to handle bedbug infestations.
The critters are oval, flat, brownish-red in colour and around the size of an apple pip.
They need regular blood intake to survive.
Humans are not their only target — they attack any warm-blooded animals, including birds.
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Bites tend to be small, red and itchy but the critters are not always easy to spot.
Often they are only discovered when it is too late, which can mean having to fumigate property and replace furniture.
Someone who knows only too well the difficulty of ridding your home of the insects is teacher Rumi Begun.
The divorced mum-of-one, who lives in Newham, East London, says: “Bedbugs had not been on my radar at all, as I have to keep the house I share with my sister spotless for my six-year-old daughter Anna, who has autoimmune disease.
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“It means she can pick up germs very easily. But in July I noticed my daughter, who lives with multiple disabilities, had a couple of small bites on her.
“At first I wondered if it was flea bites from grubby public transport seats, but they worsened and I took her to the GP, who said they were from bedbugs. It was horrifying. The doctor explained that one female bedbug can lay 400 eggs a day.
“After the GP’s advice I spent £200 at the launderette, boil- washing everything fabric, and I threw out and replaced all the mattresses.
“I was determined to exterminate them, so I called in a bedbug expert and spent £260 fumigating the entire house.
“We were told to stay away for a couple of weeks while they died, so we stayed with friends.
“But when we got back we could still see them. I then had to call a pest controller, who did a heat treatment costing £1,200.
‘Social stigma results in reluctance to seek help’
“The house was stripped bare and heated to 60 degrees for four hours. But afterwards, we could still see the bedbugs.
“My little one was terribly distressed.
“She is non-verbal and it was worrying me terribly that she couldn’t tell us if the bites on her were painful. I was bitten myself.
“The heat treatment cleaning company then did a chemical treatment for free as we have a disabled child.
"At this point I had spent £2,000, which I could not afford, as I am on a career break caring for my daughter, but one day later we still had the bugs.
“I then booked a pest controller through Newham Council, and paid a £270 one-off fee that covered the expert treating the home until the bugs were entirely gone.
“He did another search in September and discovered the bugs were coming from next door, through a crack in the skirting board on a shared wall.
“He advised us to strip that wall of wallpaper, remove all the furniture again and, for now, tape up the hole. Although it is a temporary solution, it has worked.
“We haven’t seen bedbugs for almost four weeks now — and soon we’re having the hole filled with a special foam.”
The cost-of-living crisis could be at the root of the problem, as the rate of people buying furniture on second-hand platforms like Facebook Marketplace has gone up 680 per cent.
And the clothes resale market here, which includes popular site Vinted, grew by 149 per cent between 2016 and 2022.
Natalie Bungay, of the British Pest Control Association, says: “Bringing things into your home without inspection can lead to bedbug infestations spreading.
“Bedbugs latch on to items such as luggage, clothing and second-hand furniture, and are transported into your home.
"Also, there is social stigma, which often results in reluctance to seek help.
“An infestation of bedbugs in someone’s home might get out of hand, as not everyone has a reaction to the bites, so they won’t be aware they have a pest problem.”
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‘They are notoriously difficult to treat’
Hard-up families without the means to pay for pest control are turning to DIY methods like using a home-made rubbing alcohol spray and placing infested bedding in the freezer to kill the bugs.
But Natalie warns: “If you spot signs of a bedbug infestation, we recommend you act immediately and contact a professional pest control company.
"Bedbugs are notoriously difficult to treat and DIY treatments often result in failure.”
As the number of infestations rises, David Cain, of extermination company Bed Bugs Limited, advises: “Never sit down on public transport, check office chairs, plane seats and hotel beds before contact, and monitor and vacuum your bed once a month.”
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Mum-of-one Courtney Cross, 26, wishes she had known this advice before staying at a hotel in Brighton ahead of her wedding.
The hair salon owner, who lives with tattooist husband Sam Cross, 30, in Nottingham, explains: “The nightmare started when I went alone to Brighton in June, two weeks before our wedding, to check the reception venue out.
“As I left the hotel I noticed red marks on my arm.
“At home they became angry spots on my arms, legs and stomach.
“The bites, which can take up to two days to show, were multiplying.
"They got worse and two days later I went to the GP in agony. The doctor told me they were bedbug bites and to fumigate my house.
“My lovely home, which is always super-clean, was under attack.
“My husband had a couple of bites but my daughter Wren, who is one, wasn’t bitten.
“I rang the hotel, and they called in sniffer dogs to check, but claim nothing was found.
“After a Google search I discovered an industrial strength vacuum cleaner was needed, so I borrowed one from a relative and vacuumed everything.
"I also scrubbed everything and used a specialist pesticide, bought from Amazon, and then washed every piece of clothing and soft furnishing I had on a 60-degree wash.
“The stress was awful. My wedding was in ten days and the bites were really noticeable.
“I was prescribed antibiotics and a cream. The bites worsened due to the stress of my wedding and, on my special day, I had to have them covered with body make-up.
‘Our best defence is to stay aware’
“Despite marrying the love of my life, I felt my wedding was ruined. It took four weeks to finally clear the bugs.
“I spent £300 and toiled for more than 20 hours. The marks on my arms are a horrible reminder.”
Joanna Armah-Kinson, 51, knows just how resilient bedbugs can be.
The business owner and married mum-of-one, from Lichfield, Staffs, says: “I was away on a work trip in multiple countries in high-end hotels, so bedbugs were definitely not something I would have expected to bring home as a souvenir — but I did.
“Straight after my arrival home, I started noticing bites. For a month my husband and I were covered in itchy bites, mostly on the ankles.
“Suddenly, I noticed black dots on the sheets. Google suggested it was bedbug poo. I was shocked.
“I threw out the bed, and the sheets, duvet and pillows were put on a boil wash.
“But extreme measures didn’t get rid of them, we still got bitten.
“I stripped everything out of the bedroom, sprayed behind the skirting boards with specialist insecticide and spent around £500 replacing everything. I ran a steam vacuum over the new items and, while the bugs reduced, they were still there.
“We used bug bombs from Amazon and I couldn’t sleep, as the thought of them made my skin crawl. It took four to six weeks to be free of them.”
Natalie Bungay says: “In the higher temperatures we saw at the end of the summer, the reproductive cycle of the bugs shortens from 18-21 days to eight or nine days and this means there are more around.
“Hopefully as public awareness grows and people become more vigilant in looking for bedbugs, infestations will be dealt with quickly by professionals.
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“The more we all travel, the more we’re likely to see bedbugs spread.
“Our best defence is to stay aware and call for professional help when we spot the beginnings of an infestation.”
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How to tell if your home is infested
THE common signs of a bedbug infestation are...
- Small reddish-brown clusters or dark faecal spots, about 1mm wide and looking like an ink dot, are usually found on the bed frame, upholstery or the bottom side of the mattress.
- Small blood smears on the bed linen or headboard.
- Moulted bedbug skins, pale-white eggs and empty eggshells are quite small but still visible to the eye.
- The most obvious, but not always the first, sign you find can be the small brown insects themselves, in and around your bed frame or sleeping area.
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