Bed Bug ID, etc.
Little panicked here. I live in a coop in Prospect Heights & I think we may have bed bugs. I just found a bug on my son’s bedroom rug. I looked on the DOH website & it looks like it could be one or a spider beetle. He has some bites that could be bbs…
Little panicked here. I live in a coop in Prospect Heights & I think we may have bed bugs. I just found a bug on my son’s bedroom rug. I looked on the DOH website & it looks like it could be one or a spider beetle. He has some bites that could be bbs or mosquitoes. I would like to find out what type of bug this is before we start shelling out the cash. Anybody know where I can get this little guy I caught identified? Who in the area is great at getting rid of there critters without breaking the bank? Thanks.
The bites produced by a bedbug are very characteristic. They occur in chains or circles, they are blood-filled blisters. They do not resemble mosquito or spider bites at all. Further, they leave blood rust behind. Lots of little dark specks, like pepper, that turn red when damp, they are dried blood excreted by the bugs.
Bedbugs are translucent when they are young or have not bitten anyone (filled with blood, sorry…). They are the size and shape of an apple seed and can lodge themselves in the seams of mattresses and/or corners, crevices of beds among other places. There are a lot of websites which show what they look like and where to find them.
I sent a pic to M & M to have it ID’ed (for free) & it turns out it is an innocuous shiny spider beetle. Yay! That said my kids still have bites so I am still nervous.
bb bite in clusters. the classic sign – three bites an inch or so apart. You also can distinguish mosquto and bb bites by the place on the body: mosquto bites only area exposed during the day and bb bites whatever is exposed at night.
in any case if you have a sample – take it to any of the pest control places. They will tell you for sure.
There is a pretty good bedbug primer on nyc.gov. See the link below for their identification guide.
http://www.nyc.gov/html/doh/downloads/pdf/vector/bed-bug-guide.pdf
Take it to the Natural History Museum and ask to see an Entomologist… for free.
for $20 this place will tell you if it’s a bed bug
http://identify.us.com/bed-bugs/
by coincidence, I was just reading an article today on bedbug paranoia and mis-identification on slate
http://www.slate.com/id/2266889/pagenum/all/#p2
ID place was mentioned in the article, I have no experience with them.
Do you have VERY itchy bites?
post a pic. BB’s are relatively translucent while most other bugs are not