If It's Not a Bed Bug, It Might Be A.............................Cont.

Yesterday, I blogged about "cat mites" and how they were confused with bed bugs.

There are three other bugs, that without a microscope it is impossible to tell the difference between them and the bed bug, as they are related. Before treating for bed bugs it is imperative to look at a bug specimen under a microscope or take it to an extension office and have it verified as a bed bug. The reason it is important to actually determine if you have bed bugs or not is because if you treat for bed bugs and it turns out to be a bat bug, swallow bug or a poultry bug they will be back the next day as these bugs move from the outside to the inside.

The bat bug is the bug we see most often that turns out not to be a bed bug. Some people believe that bed bugs are decedents of the bat bug, or the Cimex Adjunctus.  If a home has bat bugs the bats need to be addressed, as well. Bat bugs are usually found in old two story homes with lots of trees and vegetation surrounding the home. Bats have been seen flying outside at night, near the house. However, this is not always true as we have seen bat bugs in a suburban tri-level home with the owner unaware that bats were close by. We have also found them in a two-story home with a flat roof.

The first bat bug we found was in a two story Denver Square home close to the Botanic Gardens. The customer had treated for bed bugs a few days before and now the the bugs were back. Dusty Boot thoroughly searched the upper levels of the home where the bug specimens were found. We looked outside the window and on the ledge there was some bat guano and low and behold it looked like a "bed bug" crawling into the room at the window sill, outside in! We picked up the bug and taped it to a white sheet of paper and looked at it under a microscope.

Sure enough, after looking at the length of the hairs on the upper covering of the thorax of the bug the length of the bug's hair was longer the width of it's eye, so it was a bat bug.  A bed bug hairs that are smaller than the width of it's eye.

See picture:

Bat bugs prefer bats to humans so their infestations do not seem to be as entrenched, and we've found that they can even be somewhat seasonal. We have found bat bugs typically close to the window openings or on the drapes.

So do you have bat bugs or bed bugs, something to consider!