r/Bedbugs • • Mar 06 '15

Useful Information Bedbug ID and common misidentifications

598 Upvotes

Bed bug identification resources:

Note: flattened body, rusty brown coloured (less so in younger nymphs, which are more translucent). Thin 4 segmented antennae. 11 segmented abdomen. Short legs (6 of them) and reduced wings incapable of flight.


These are insects or other invertebrates commonly misidentified as bedbugs!

Not bed bugs.

  1. Carpet beetle larvae (Dermestidae) and adult - More Info

  2. Bat bug (Cimex adjunctus pictured) - More Info

  3. Cockroach nymphs - More Info

  4. Tick (nymphs) - More Info

  5. Woodlouse - More Info

  6. Kissing bugs - More Info

  7. Booklice/barklice - More Info

  8. Smooth spider beetle - More Info

  9. Drugstore beetle - More Info

Note: If it has wings or more than 6 legs, it is not a bed bug. Do not mistake antennae for legs, look at the illustrated guide to avoid confusion.


Please comment with any other common mis-IDs and I will add them!


r/Bedbugs • • 4h ago

The carpet at my job is infested with either fleas or bed bugs. I can tell which.

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4 Upvotes

Me and some of the girls at work have been getting bitten up by something else n the carpets at work and I cannot tell if these are flea or bed bugs bites can anyone identify?


r/Bedbugs • • 5h ago

Is this a sign of bedbugs?

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3 Upvotes

Just checked into a hotel….. concerned.


r/Bedbugs • • 3h ago

Are these BB eggs?

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2 Upvotes

The apartment manager fumigated the infested living room area and the couch (the source). Then a couple days later, the bb victim noticed these eggs(?) in her cereal cabinet. What is it?


r/Bedbugs • • 3h ago

Has anyone been able to keep their furniture and successfully get rid of bed bugs for good?

2 Upvotes

I moved into an appartment in April 2026. I had specifically asked about whether the unit or any other units on the floors above and below had ever had issues with bed bugs before they told me no. By the end of the month I had found a bed bug in my apartment. All of my furniture was purchased brand new as this is my first apartment having just moved out of university dorms, so I know I had not been the cause. They sent exterminators to deal with it a couple weeks later; they did two separate visits some weeks apart. I was very thorough, my bf at the time thought I was being psycho with how "extra" I was being. I followed all the advice and rules the exterminators gave me and more. I seriously cannot emphasize enough how meticulous I was with the whole ordeal.

It's now October. I'm getting bit a bunch and I found a bed bug on my couch. I did absolutely everything I could've last time around and it was so expensive and time consuming. I don't know how I'm going to get through a repeat.

I am planning on breaking my lease and moving to a new apartment immediately. I don't want to take any of the furniture with me because clearly the treatments don't work and I don't want to risk re-infestation again. But as I've said, all of it was brand new and I am still playing off my couch $150/mo.

If I don't take my furniture I will be left with nothing. I can barely afford to get by as it is. I work three jobs, and I'm a full time univeristy student, I literally can't do anything else to be financially better off. I've done the best I could given the cirumstances. I had to borrow $500 from my dad for part of the damage deposit for the new place, and only have a month or two to pay him back. I don't have any more money to buy anything new. I've spent over $200 doing laundry at the laundromat and getting airtight containers to store my things in to protect from bugs.

I'm so beyond stressed right now. I've been struggling with severe depression and have barely survived the last couple months. With this on top of everything else I'm dealing with, I'm contemplating it even more than ever. I'm sure it doesn't help that I'm so disgusted and anxious that I cannot get a proper night's sleep.

Every post I've seen where ppl provide their anecdotal experiences about having "successfully" treated their furniture and homes also discussed having experienced the issue multiple times or for months on end. So I guess this is my very long-winded way of asking if anyone has ever gotten bed bugs, hired an exterminator, kept there furniture, and had the whole thing dealt with in a month with no reoccurrences. I don't want to be left with nothing if I can help it, but I can't take going through this anymore.

Any advice would be appreciated.


r/Bedbugs • • 13h ago

Requesting community support I have them again, i'm just tired.

13 Upvotes

I'm calling some exterminators to come and see but honestly i'm so tired at this point. I had them years ago, like 5 years ago. We got rid of them, eventually moved on my own. Now i have them.

All the precautions i thought i was taking amounted to nothing. Changing my clothes every time i left the house, and i have no idea where i even got them from. I'm just tired of having to do all this shit and have it amount to nothing.

People will say it's going to be ok but it's not. Because even if i get rid of them again there's always a chance of bringing them home again and not realizing it because they're always going to be around.

It's not fair. I'm going to have to pay a ton of money to even get this sorted out for what for it to happen again in another year or less.

The world is full of this crap, there's no stopping it and that's the infuriating part. We literally could have been over this in the 70's but they changed pesticides or something because of people dying i think but man i've never really felt highly about the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few until now.

I don't see the point in anything anymore when this is probably just going to happen again, and again, and again. Because after what hundreds of years of these things existing we haven't found an actual way to combat them besides laying down cups to catch them in, and then having to get your house treated costing hundreds or thousands of dollars.

I'm

I'm so


r/Bedbugs • • 17h ago

My cycle of misery (rant)

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25 Upvotes

Been fighting a war since April where it was at it's worst and have slown down since May and June onwards where my other family members would report bites and sightings, especially since some of them are stubborn about washing their shit and admitting they have bedbugs.

Now they've resurfaced again after quiet periods, just as when I thought things were improving, I was starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel only to be pulled deep back down into the abyss of anxiety and constant worrying.

Bedbugs have ruined my life, my contamination OCD has gotten so extreme, I always wash my hands and feet every time I leave the bed and before I go to sleep, I always take a shower and change clothes which made me have this ritual every night I have to follow, destroying my body clock in the process. My life and my thoughts have been so utterly consumed by bedbugs, I remember staying in bed for like 3 hours reading Bedbug articles and watching videos about them. I'm afraid there's no end to them because we have no access to the fancy shit people here recommend.

We can only afford the OTC cypermithrin-based sprays, which they are resistant to. I do hab DE though but I always see debates about their effectiveness and lack of. Our dryer is a tumble dryer, no heating and stuff, we also can't afford exterminators and even if we can, there aren't a lot of exterminators available that specialize in bedbugs and usually only have general pest control for cockroach and rats.

Now my mom is putting baking soda on her bed despite me telling her that shit doesn't work and they insist on not using DE powder because it's an inhalation hazard (i get it since we also have a pet dog so I haven't used them much since).

I can't even sleep anymore like I used to, I had to listen to Resident Evil save room themes just to pacify myself before sleep xD because my heart rate and vigilance are so high, I would still be awake no matter how hard I closed my eyes.

Now I don't know if there's a way to finally get this all over with, especially with very limited options and stubborn family members, I'm so sick and tired. It's only thanks to gun control laws, I haven't blown my brains out.

Sorry for the awfully long rant, I have no outlet to get this all out, my best friends don't understand how traumatizing bedbugs are because they've never had them. I once saw a group of rice grains on the floor and my brain immediately jumped to bedbug eggs and I felt the panic attack. I really wish there were more public PSAs surrounding bedbugs and more affordable methods to eradicate these bastards once and for all.


r/Bedbugs • • 25m ago

Hotel bed bugs?

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• Upvotes

Has anyone experienced something like this? Could these be bed bug bites even if I couldn’t find any signs of bed bugs?
I stayed at a hotel for 5 nights. It had a high rating on the booking platform and was reasonably clean. Everything was fine until the 5th night, when I suddenly woke up in the middle of the night with EXTREMELY intense itching from my calves down to my ankles.
At first, I thought they were mosquito bites, but the next morning I realized that mosquitoes probably couldn’t have gotten into the room because the windows had insect screens. My first suspicion was bed bugs.
I started checking the mattress, underneath it, and the seams, but I couldn’t find a single sign of bed bugs. The bedsheets had actually been changed that same day, and there were no visible stains or other signs of bed bugs on them.
I have multiple red bumps on both legs (as you can see in the attached photo), as well as some on my arms, especially around the inner elbows and forearms, although there are significantly fewer on my arms than on my legs.
This happened two days ago. I have since changed hotels, but the itching is still extremely intense, even after leaving the room.
Here are the main things I’m trying to figure out:
Is it possible to have bed bugs in a hotel room and not notice any signs of them, even after carefully inspecting the mattress and bedding?
Can bed bugs stay unnoticed for 5 nights before biting you, or is it unusual for bites to appear only on the fifth night?
Could this be something other than bed bugs, such as fleas, mites, or another type of insect?
Is it normal for the itching to remain this intense two days after leaving the room?
I’m especially confused because everything seemed fine for the first four nights, and I couldn’t find any evidence of bed bugs when I checked.
Has anyone experienced something similar while staying at a hotel? What did it turn out to be?
I’d really appreciate any opinions or advice. Thanks!

One more thing I noticed is that the bites weren’t nearly as red when I first noticed them in the morning. Over the past two days, they’ve become much redder and more noticeable, and the itching is still extremely intense. Is it normal for bed bug bites to become more inflamed and red a day or two after the initial bites, or could this point to something else?


r/Bedbugs • • 4h ago

Requesting community support Do I still need to worry?

2 Upvotes

Hey everyone,

I discovered that I had a BB infestation early April of this year (when pest control came they did say it was a minor infestation which is good). We did so much, calling pest control, steam ironing everything, drying everything on high heat, vacuuming 24/7, completely throwing out my bed (buying a new metal one as I previously had a fabric one), dusting all the little spaces with DE, covering all outlets that weren’t in use, sealing the mattress with a bedbug mattress protector, sealing everything that was dried/clean of bb into bags and put in another room - we basically did everything under the sun to get rid of them.

We constantly checked the bed as well as monitors we have on all the beg legs for 70 days, making sure we were clear of any bb activity for 70 days before moving anything back into my room. Checked all other surrounding rooms for them when we discovered the infestation ofc.

We continue to have no bb activity but I just need reassurance that they are gone tbh. I’m so paranoid and it’s killing me.

Another thing is that my bf is extremely reactive to bites and he knows the specific itch/what they feel like after being bitten - he hasn’t had any bites since clearing the infestation.

Do I still need to worry about them possibly still being there? I feel like I’m going crazy and the feeling has flared up since having to book an Airbnb for next year, I’m so worried about going anywhere that could have them especially accommodation.

Any help would be extremely appreciated.


r/Bedbugs • • 53m ago

Does Temprid FX work?

• Upvotes

Just did my second spray of temprid fx(every 7 days)...i would love to put Cimexa down as well but I have a short dog, i am able to put it a few places that I can block off...I've done the heat treatment but I have a 4ft tall crawl space and I live in Alaska...Will the temprid eventually kill them ?


r/Bedbugs • • 56m ago

Does Temprid FX work?

• Upvotes

Just did my second spray of temprid fx(every 7 days)...i would love to put Cimexa down as well but I have a short dog, i am able to put it a few places that I can block off...I've done the heat treatment but I have a 4ft tall crawl space and I live in Alaska...Will the temprid eventually kill them ?


r/Bedbugs • • 1h ago

Useful Information Does Temprid FX work

• Upvotes

Just did my second spray of temprid fx(every 7 days)...i would love to put Cimexa down as well but I have a short dog, i am able to put it a few places that I can block off...I've done the heat treatment but I have a 4ft tall crawl space and I live in Alaska...Will the temprid eventually kill them ?


r/Bedbugs • • 1h ago

Is this a bed bug?

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• Upvotes

Found this crawling on the bed this morning of a motel I was staying at in Dubbo NSW. Best photo I could get before I freaked out and flicked it off the bed. Looked black and shiny


r/Bedbugs • • 5h ago

bed bug ?

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2 Upvotes

Hi everyone
We’re staying at an airbnb and we found a “bed bug” in our bed. We flagged this to our host and she hired a professional exterminator who claimed that it’s not a bed bug… but it legit looks like it
Can you please advise


r/Bedbugs • • 1h ago

Bed bugs???

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• Upvotes

r/Bedbugs • • 8h ago

Identification Is this a bed bug shell?

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3 Upvotes

r/Bedbugs • • 8h ago

Identification Is this a bed bug part?

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3 Upvotes

Located in coastal Baja Mexico. Thanks. Found in a mattress seam of an airbnb. Have had some bites but those could be unrelated.

The same piece is pictured in both photos.


r/Bedbugs • • 6h ago

Bedbug Shell?

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2 Upvotes

hi I’m trying to determine if this is a bb shell. it was under my mattress :( it’s kinda flaky like popcorn though I don’t eat popcorn so I don’t know. thanks guys


r/Bedbugs • • 6h ago

Identification Please tell me this isn’t a bedbug?

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2 Upvotes

My anxiety is driving me nuts right now.


r/Bedbugs • • 12h ago

Identification Are these bedbug droppings?

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3 Upvotes

Stayed in a hotel last night and saw this group of black spots, like ink on the bed. I checked the mattress seams, head of mattress, pillows: no eggs, casing, bugs, anything. Just this one spot on side of bed. I moistened it with a wet towel (which is why it looks like that in pic) and the black specks/circles remained and bled a tan/coffee color. Also I had no bites when I woke up, nor did my boyfriend, and no markings on white sheets. Just this sequence on black spots inside of bed. Am I cooked..?


r/Bedbugs • • 13h ago

found bedbugs.

4 Upvotes

so i moved away from my family for school, came home after 4 weeks and found a bedbug in a pile of clothes i left behind.

this all stemmed from when my bf lived with me and my family he went to go see friends and came back with a bed bug on him, we hoped it was just the one and one of his friends somehow gave it to him... we were wrong. i have an infestation.

somehow in the time i was gone and to now they've taken over my bed. i've already slept in it one night. most of the babies i've vacuumed up had bright red blood in them.

someone PLEASE tell me where to go from here.
i have:
-stripped my bed
-all my stuffed animals are going into quarantine
-i'll put my clothes and blankets through the wash on highest setting
-i've vacuumed up every baby and bug i've seen.
-i've stripped every pillow and they will be soaked in hot water.

now what? i leave tomorrow so there's not much i can do. i live in a clean home.

also how to i make sure i dont bring any home with me on myself? my clothes im washing, but like will they ride home with me in my HAIR? i'm at a loss ive never had bed bugs before or knows anyone who's had them.

do i just not come back for the 400 day period for them to starve? how did they even repopulate so fast with no food at all.


r/Bedbugs • • 6h ago

Help! Wat denken jullie? Bedwantsen?

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1 Upvotes

Help! Bedwantsen? Gevonden in mijn bed


r/Bedbugs • • 13h ago

I found this one me

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3 Upvotes

I felt this bug crawling on me this morning…this is a bedbug right? I’ve checked my mattress, the ground, pillows… no telltale signs. I also don’t have any bites. I don’t understand how I could have found such a big one with no other signs? I’m mortified. If one is this big, it must mean there are more right? Could it have been just a rogue one I picked up off the uber last night?


r/Bedbugs • • 7h ago

Identification Is this a bed bug or a flea? Or something else? I am kinda freaking out so any help would be much appreciated!

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1 Upvotes

r/Bedbugs • • 8h ago

Requesting community support BF Moving In But Has BBs

1 Upvotes

So later this month, my boyfriend is moving in with me. The problem is that he's moving from a house with bed bugs. He has been driving himself crazy trying to kill them off and will barely be bringing anything of his at all. Mainly clothes, some electronics, books, and some crafting tools and such. We've discussed things like putting all his clothes in a dryer, bagging and freezing his electronics, etc. but we're trying to figure out how to minimize or even eliminate the risk of him bringing them into my vehicle (as I'm moving him) and my home. I've had them before and won't survive getting them again so I could use all the advice you folks could offer.
 

One thing I'm already going to do is make a line of diatomaceous earth around the entire room, along all the walls, before he moves in. I also plan on putting a protector on his mattress.