Bed bug treatment for Mill Park guesthouses and homes

If a guest has complained of bites, or you've found small blood spots on the sheets in a Mill Park guesthouse or home, treat it as bed bugs until you know otherwise and act quickly. Bed bugs don't go away on their own, they spread from room to room, and the earlier they're treated the smaller the job. The good news is that a careful, targeted treatment with a follow-up deals with them well.

Why guesthouses in Mill Park are exposed

Bed bugs have nothing to do with how clean a place is. They travel. They hide in luggage, clothing and handbags and get carried from one bed to the next by people who never knew they had them. A guesthouse welcomes a steady stream of travellers, so sooner or later most will have a guest bring some in.

Many of Mill Park's guesthouses are converted older homes, and that adds to the challenge. Heavy wooden bed frames and headboards have joints and screw holes for bed bugs to hide in. Timber floors have gaps along the skirtings. Picture rails, old wallpaper seams and built-in wardrobes give them yet more hiding places. None of this makes them untreatable, but it means the inspection has to be thorough.

Family homes get them too, most often after travel or after buying a second-hand bed or couch.

Signs of bed bugs

• Itchy bites in lines or clusters on the arms, neck, shoulders or back after sleeping
• Small rust-coloured or dark spots on sheets, pillowcases and mattress seams
• Pale, shed skins and tiny white eggs along seams, in frame joints and behind headboards
• Live bugs, flat and brown, about the size of an apple seed
• A sweetish, musty smell in a badly affected room

Not every bite is a bed bug. Bites around the ankles are more often fleas, and tiny crawling specks near a window or ceiling can be bird mites from a nest in the roof. Our page on working out what's biting you in Mill Park can help, and if it turns out to be fleas, see flea control for Mill Park homes.

What to do as soon as you suspect them

• Stop using the room if you can, and don't move the bedding or furniture into another room.
• Strip the bed and wash the linen on the hottest wash the fabric allows, then tumble dry on high.
• Don't spray the room with a household insecticide. It scatters bed bugs into walls and neighbouring rooms.
• Take photos of anything you find and send them to us on WhatsApp.

How we treat

1. Inspection. We check mattresses, bed bases, frames, headboards, bedside tables, skirtings, curtains, picture rails and sockets in the affected room, and check the rooms on either side.
2. Preparation. We give you a short list beforehand: linen and clothing to wash, clutter to clear and furniture to pull from the walls.
3. Treatment. A targeted residual treatment into seams, joints, cracks and along skirtings, where bed bugs actually hide.
4. Follow-up. Bed bug eggs aren't reliably killed by the first treatment, so we come back to treat the ones that have hatched since.

You don't need to move out of the house. Rooms should stay empty, with children and pets kept out, until treated surfaces have dried.

A tip for Mill Park guesthouse owners

Give housekeeping a two-minute check to do at every room turnover: lift the corner of the mattress, look along the seam and run a torch along the headboard joint. Catching a few bed bugs in one room is a small job. Finding them after they've spread through a whole floor of an old house is a big one.

What people get wrong

Throwing out the mattress and buying a new one, without treating the room. The bed bugs are also in the frame, the headboard and the skirtings, and the new mattress is reinfested within weeks. Carrying the old mattress through the house can spread them as well.

What does it cost?

The number of rooms affected is the biggest factor, followed by how much furniture each room has and how established the infestation is. One bedroom caught early is a contained job with a follow-up. Several rooms in a guesthouse take longer. There isn't really a reliable DIY route for bed bugs, so this is one where calling early saves money.

See bed bug treatment across Port Elizabeth and how we help student digs and flats in Summerstrand. The Mill Park pest control page covers the area more widely.

Call 087 012 5550 to arrange an inspection, or WhatsApp us a photo of what you've found.