Bed Bugs

My Daughter spent a week in Ft Lauderdale before coming to spend a week with us. Unfortunatly, the hotel room she stayed in had bed bugs! And she didnt realize it until the third day of her stay.

Bed bugs can be in dirty hotels and clean. They hide in folds and crevices and come out at night to feed. When they emrge, they can travel 15 feet and move quickly across the floor. They feed by sucking on your blood, and they can live for up to a year without feeding.

To prevent renting an infested room, you must pull back the bedsheets and look at the edge of the bed and matress. Bed bugs will poop out black dots that will be found in these areas. If you find bedbug poop? Move to another room or hotel.

If you do stay in an infested room, the solution can be fairly easy in Florida during tbe summer time. Killing bed bugs and their eggs requires 115 degrees for a minimum 30 minutes. The inside of a car can easily hit 120 degrees during the summer. Just lay all your stuff out on the dash and seats and park your car in the sun.

Something else you can do is to throw your clothes in a dryer set on high for 30 minutes. Just make sure you don't contanimate anything during the process. Bed bug eggs are the size of a grain of sand. They stick to your clothes and belongings. You dont want to take any home nor infest your villa.

Everything needs the heat treatment: clothes, suitcases, stuffed animals... everything.

We took a different approach for luggage. We went to Lowes and bought a bed bug kit made for king size matresses. We put all the luggage in the huge plastic bag, put bed bug poison in the bag and sealed it for 7 days. We then put the bag in our villa's garage, which gets very hot.

Coming across bed bugs is unfortunate. But it is manageable. I hope I have provided some ideas that will help.