Controlling bed bugs is a bit like a chinese puzzle, things that seem the most logical often only make matters worse. Lets analise the logical approach.

You have beeen waking up to itchy lumps for a few weeks and you have been to the doctor who sent you to a specialist who did blood tests and gave you some cream. You wake in the wee hours and turn on the light and here are several little black looking bugs crawling on you and/or the sheets, so you panic, somewhere you have heard about bed bugs and thier diabolical, blood sucking habits so you drag your bed and base through the house and leave it out back, you gather the bedding and dump it in the laundry to wash first thing and empty two cans of mortein into the bedroom, then go and settle in for the night on the sofa.

  AAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHH

 









So whats the problem! 

1. Moving the bed: Bed bugs are very clumsey creatures and are more than likely to fall off furniture as you drag it through the house. Further, once outside they will very quickly get upset by the light and heat and lack of food and will begin an exodus which could see them return to your home or that of your neighboors, which could take enough time for them to avoid the treatment and re-infest. 
2. Dumping the laundry: Once again, the bugs are likely to fall off as any article from the room is moved and any bugs on the bedding are now being relocated to the laundry and will start their search for an host from there.
3. Spraying pesticide: Most pesticides are only effective if they directly contact the bugs and the rest can closet themselves into reclusive areas such as wall/roof cavities, hollow walls etc until the odour and threat have faded and then may return, or nest and feed from these inaccessible areas 
4. Sleeping on the couch: Bed bugs can exist for a year or two without a meal but will, given there are readily available meals (you and yours) nearby, will seek out bodies in the house and resettle in new abodes.

If you have an infestation you need to leave them where they are and treat them effectively and completely, before they can spread. This is a specialised treatment for several reasons. Given there is no outside, misguided efforts, the bed bugs will be centred around the host, you, in bed. This means any room where there are indications of an infestation means that the whole room has to be treated, but that is much better and cheaper than treating the whole house.

One of the major problems with treatment is that there is NO PESTICIDE WHICH KILLS THE EGGS OF BED BUGS, and most pesticides cannot be sprayed on the bed. So this means that a spray application does not target a main source of the infestation nor the future generation of bugs.

UPDATE: A RECENT RESEARCH PAPER FROM AMERICA HAS SHOWN THE RESISTANCE TO SYNTHETIC PYRETHROID TYPE PESTICIDES OF BED BUGS. ALVARO ROMERO, MICHAEL POTTER & KENNETH HAYNES FROM THE UNIVERSITY OF KENTUCKY, STUDIED MORTALITY RATES OF BED BUG COLONIES FROM 15 SITES ACROSS AMERICA AND TWO OLD LABORITORY COLONIES SAVED FROM THE MID 1900'S. THE TWO, OLDER LAB COLONIES SHOWED 100% MORTALITY, ONE MODERN SITE SHOWED 45% MORTALITY WITH THE OTHER 14 MODERN COLONIES SHOWING NO MORTALITY. THE PESTICIDE TESTED WAS PYRETHROID, THE MOST COMMON PESTICIDE IN USE TODAY. NO TESTING OF THIS SORT HAS RECENTLY BEEN DONE IN AUSTRALIA BUT IT WOULD BE REASONABLE TO BELIEVE SIMILAR RESULTS ARE LIKELY. PESTICIDES BASED ON SYNTHETIC PYRETHROIDS ARE STILL RECOMMENDED ON CERTAIN WEBSITES AND THIS IS MISLEADING AND IRRESPONSIBLE!

SCAMS
They may be dillusionary, uneducated or downright dishonest, but there seems to be a lot of dodgy treatment methods appearing locally and on the net.
Natural oils: These will repel bed bugs by the strong odour but they come back, usually fairly quickly.
Bed Bug Barriers: Bed bugs are well known to climb to the ceiling and drop onto beds (see wickipedia, bedbuggers etc) and this even outsmarted Auntie (new inventors).
One treatment: a/ steam, if anyone could find every bed bug and egg located in a room, he would be a genius (1st instar 1.2mm and transparent), steam alone can regulate but not eliminate bugs. b/ pesticide, as I keep saying, pesticides do not effect eggs so pesticide only has to be two treatments with the RIGHT pesticide.
Room Heating: This would work if the room could be sealed and raised to a consistant 70 dgrees C for an hour. I hear of an operator who just heats up the room and watches as the bugs scurry into every adjoining area.

Effective treatment involves the use of steam to kill both live bed bugs and the eggs, and the appplication of an effective, residual pesticide that eliminates any bugs missed in the initial treatment. Pest controllers who are too constrained to use steam, will tell you to throw away perfectly good furniture and that they need to apply several spray treatments that will be costly and are a random way to try to break the breeding cycle. Sometimes, they are successful but, often, they just reduce the population, which can stop people reacting or itching, only to have them re-emerge at a later date. Any guarantee given for a period under twelve months is a gimmick and of no value.

YOU CAN PAY TWICE AS MUCH FOR HALF THE JOB OR GET THE JOB DONE PROPERLY WITH A SPECIALIST BED BUG CONTROLLER.

DO IT ONCE,
DO IT RIGHT,
DON'T LET THE BED BUGS BITE
ABBS PEST CONTROL
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