How One Bedbug Can Hurt You

Bedbugs are one of the most problematic and expensive challenges affecting residential and commercial properties, today. They cause severe discomfort, breed quickly, and can only be eliminated by an expert.

Because treating bedbugs is often so labor and cost intensive, many property owners hope to avoid it. Bedbugs do require both a male and female to breed, so many hope that if they find only one bedbug, they do not have to go through with a treatment and can instead try to remove the bedbug manually or wait for it to die on its own.

Unfortunately, that method rarely works.

Why Even One Bedbug is a Threat

Bedbugs are not believed to carry disease. They cannot sting and they are not deadly. Yet even one single bedbug represents a threat to your property:

  • Rarely Alone – First, bedbugs are spectacular hiders. Seeing one bedbug is, itself, usually a sign that you have many others. That is because when just one bedbug lives on a property, it is essentially impossible to find. But when there are more, the odds of seeing one go up.
  • Potential Eggs – Female bedbugs lay eggs after they’ve already been inseminated. If they give birth to a male bedbug, they may eventually mate with that bedbug and create more.
  • Long Lives – Bedbugs can live 3 months without feeding and 6 months when they feed. If you get another bedbug during that time, the breeding will start fast.
  • Unknown Source – Unless you are 100% positive you know where you were when you got bedbugs, you may take more home with you in the future. If all bedbugs are eliminated, the chances of multiple bedbugs to mate decreases.
  • Biting is Itchy/Irritating – Even if you did manage to bring home a single bedbug, and that bedbug is male and cannot reproduce, that still means you’ll struggle with months of extremely itchy bites before the bedbug dies off.

It is theoretically possible to only have one bedbug. But it is rare, and given how likely it is you have more or that your bedbugs could cause further problems, it is always best to have it treated. Call Local Pest today for bedbug control in the Vancouver and Victoria area.