Bed bug treatment in Grenada
Bed bugs arrive in luggage and second-hand furniture, not through poor housekeeping, and they turn up in clean homes and good hotels alike. They feed at night and hide in the daytime, so people often live with them for weeks before anyone works out what the bites are.
Why this one needs a proper job
- They hide in anything a credit card would fit into: mattress seams and piping, the joints of a bed frame, behind a headboard, in drawer runners and under skirting.
- Eggs survive a lot of what kills adults, which is why one visit is rarely the end of it and a follow-up is part of the work rather than a sign it went wrong.
- They travel. Left alone they move along a corridor or into luggage, so in a guesthouse or a block the room next door matters as much as the one that reported it.
- Supermarket sprays tend to scatter them deeper into a room and into neighbouring rooms, which makes the job longer and more expensive.
Bed bugs are not known to pass disease to people. What they cause is a reaction to their saliva, which can range from nothing at all to welts that itch for days, and scratching can get a bite infected. The part people underestimate is the sleep and the worry. If you run a guesthouse or a hotel, the reputational cost of leaving it alone is larger than the cost of treating it.
How to tell you have a problem
- Bites in a line or a small cluster, usually on skin that was uncovered in bed, and often itchy only after a day or two.
- Small dark spots along mattress seams, on the bed frame, or on the wall behind the headboard.
- Rusty or brown smears on the sheets where one has been rolled on.
- Pale shed skins in the seams and joints, which look like empty bed bugs.
- A sweet, musty smell in a room with a heavy infestation.
- Live bugs in the piping of the mattress or in the gap where the headboard meets the wall, which is where to look first.
Common species here
The one the Caribbean usually sees. Same habits and same treatment as the common species, and telling them apart is a job for a lens.
Found worldwide and arrives here with travellers. Reddish brown, flat, about the size of an apple pip when fed.
How we treat it
We take the bed apart and go through seams, frames, headboards, bedside furniture and skirting, and we check the rooms either side. We will tell you honestly whether what you have is bed bugs or something else.
We treat every place they are hiding rather than only the bed, and we tell you what to launder and at what temperature, and what to leave alone so it does not get carried to another room.
We come back to check and treat anything that hatched since the first visit. Expect this. A single visit that is declared finished on the day is not a thorough treatment of bed bugs.
What you can do yourself
None of this replaces a treatment, but it makes the treatment work better and last longer.
- Do not throw the mattress out yet. It is expensive, it rarely solves it, and carrying it through the building spreads them.
- Do not move to another room to sleep. They follow, and now you have two rooms to treat.
- Do not spray a supermarket aerosol around the bed. It scatters them further into the room and makes the job harder.
- Wash and tumble dry bedding on the hottest setting the fabric allows. Heat in the dryer is what does the work, not the wash.
- Put a photo of anything you find on your phone and send it to us. It saves a visit when it turns out to be something else.
- If you have just come back from travelling, unpack onto a hard floor rather than onto the bed, and check the luggage seams.
Common questions
Not covered here? Call us on (473) 403-7251 and we'll talk it through.
Usually not, and anyone promising that is overselling. Eggs survive what kills adults, so we plan for a follow-up visit from the start and tell you when to expect it. That is included in what we quote, not an extra.
Almost never. A mattress and frame can nearly always be treated in place. Keeping it beats carrying it through the house and seeding the hallway on the way out.
Yes. We come in unmarked clothing if you ask, we work to your quiet hours, and we do not discuss the job with anyone but you. We will also tell you which neighbouring rooms we think need checking, because treating one room in isolation usually fails.
No. Bed bugs are carried in on luggage and second-hand furniture, and we find them in spotless homes and well-run hotels. It is about who has been through the room, not how it is kept.