Bed Bug Bites - What Signs Should You Look For Around the Bed?

Why Bites Do Not Prove It

Reactions vary enormously. Some people come up in obvious raised welts, some produce almost nothing, and some react days after the bite rather than the same night. So the bite you are looking at is not necessarily from last night, and the absence of bites on your partner proves nothing at all.

Bed bug bites also look like a great many other things: flea bites, mosquito bites, an allergic reaction, heat rash, or a skin condition entirely unrelated to insects. No one can identify bed bugs from a photograph of a bite, and anyone who says otherwise is guessing.

What the Pattern Sometimes Tells You

They are typically on skin that was uncovered in bed — arms, shoulders, neck, hands, ankles — and often in a rough line or a small cluster rather than scattered, because a bug may probe more than once.

They are usually not on skin that was under bedclothes all night, and they usually appear overnight rather than during the day. That is suggestive. It is not proof.

The Three Things to Check Instead

Dark spotting along the piping seam of the mattress, all the way round, and on the sheet near the top edge. It looks like a fine felt-tip dot and smudges reddish-brown on damp tissue.

Shed skins in the frame joints, around screw holes and behind the headboard — translucent, empty and bug-shaped. And live insects: flat, oval, reddish-brown, roughly the size of an apple pip when fed.

Where to Look, in Order

Strip the bed completely. Seam of the mattress first, then the label and the underside of the piping. Then every joint of the frame, particularly slat-to-rail and any bolt housing or screw hole. Then the headboard, front and back, and the wall behind it. Then the bedside furniture and the skirting nearest the bed.

Use a torch and take your time. Fifteen minutes properly done answers the question far better than a fortnight of studying your arms.

If You Find Nothing but the Bites Continue

Have it inspected. Bed bugs early on are genuinely hard to find, and a bedroom where somebody is being bitten and nothing has been found is not a clear room — it is a room where you have not found it yet.

It is £220 for the first room and £120 for each additional one. And do not move to the spare room while you decide: that is the commonest way a one-room job becomes a two-room job.