Bedbug habits that are the beginning of their downfall.
-They can be active at any time of the day. You will see them while you are awake and you will know they are around.
-They must come to a sleeping person to feed. You know where then to concentrate most of your efforts to wipe them out. If they don't drink blood they cannot develop to their further life stages. (They will also such your blood during the day as you sit in a chair but generally they seek you out at night in the dark.)
-They crawl on walls and that makes it easy to notice them and to know they are around. If you spray insecticide you have to spray all the way to the ceiling. I have seen them crawl all the way to the ceiling. I have never seen them crawling on the ceiling but they probably can. If so then they can drop on you from above. Once on your bed however they will suck your blood and then go down into the bed and have to face your insect powders.
-They crawl much slower than a cockroach so they are easier to catch and kill. They can't crawl on smooth surfaces very well. I have seen them many times in the the bathroom and even by our front door crawling on the walls. They can't crawl up the smooth tiles so they climb up the grout between the tiles. A cockroach can crawl on the tiles.
-They love the smell of humans. They love backpacks because you wear it often and it smells like you and you never wash it. Always check seams of backpacks. Every time I laid my backpack on the floor within 5 minutes there were a couple of bedbugs on it. The backpack was really old and had been accumulating my smell for a very long time since it often gets damp from the sweat of my back. The last thing you need is a bedbug crawling on your clothes or backpack on the bus, very embarassing but that is how they spread.
-Baby bedbugs are tiny and almost invisible and cannot crawl through a light dusting of insect powder without getting a lot of it on them. Use lots of powder so that the body of the adults get a good amount of insect dust on it. Just go crazy with insect powder the more the better but don't go too crazy tearing apart your bedroom, the bedbugs will eventually come to your bed to feed. Sprinkle your baseboards and around edges fairly heavily. Then sprinkle areas that you can easily access. Bedbugs get into boxes and out of the way areas. You can't predict where they will be laying their eggs, don't drive yourself nuts, just be assured that as soon as the babies hatch they will run to your bed. Focus on treating your bed area. Put lots of junk under your bed. If there is junk under the bed they will want to hide there rather than somewhere further. Just be sure that you cover all the junk under the bed with insect powder. I left all the stuff under my bed to provide hiding places for the bedbugs but I dusted everything with insect powder. Under my bed I had a box of small junk. I took everything out of the box. Then I put a few things back in the box and dusted them with powder and then put in a couple of more things and put dust on those things. The dust is sprinkled over everything in the box, sort of in layers. If the bedbugs hide there they will become covered in dust and die.
-Bedbugs just love to snuggle(This is the one endearing thing I like about bedbugs. Boy can those guys snuggle. Guys, watch the bedbugs and learn a few good lessons from them before you wipe them off the face of the earth. Your girlfriend will love you for it. I think bedbugs were born to snuggle and are definitely experts.) If you put a bunch of them in a container you will see that they sleep together in a ball. They are very social and sleep together and snuggle together in a tight ball. This is perfect because when they snuggle they transfer insect powder and poison to each other.
-Bedbugs are lazy. When it is their sleeping time if they are disturbed they run back and snuggle in a ball and fall asleep again in seconds. All this is good for transferring insect powder and poison to each other.
-Alway catch few bedbugs and keep them in containers to test your pesticides to be sure the pesticide is actually working. I like to keep them in cottage cheese and yogurt containers becasue they can't climb up the sides. They try to climb up the sides and end up on their backs too often and usually need the help of one of their bedbug brothers or sisters to help them get upright. They are funny to watch. When they are on their back and catch one of their brothers they roll them in circles (lol). (Guys if you roll your girlfriend like the bedbugs do she will just get dizzy. DON'T ROLL YOUR GIRLFRIEND, just simple snuggling will do.)