Pest control expert talks bedbugs as France battles infestation

If the very thought of bedbugs fills you with dread, you’re not over-reacting.

“They’re a nightmare!” says Kieran Lambert, a pest control expert based in Rathconrath in Westmeath.

Although Kieran is rarely fazed by the sorts of creatures that give most of the rest of us the heebie jeebies, even he shudders when it comes to bedbugs.

“I’d rather deal with a rat infestation than bedbugs,” he admits – and he deals regularly with both.

The nasties are much in the news these days after social media videos showed that France is currently suffering so badly from them that they have been spotted crawling on seats in the metro and at a cinema. Britain is also dealing with outbreaks.

The truth is, however, that they pop up regularly enough in this country too, and getting rid of them is not easy.

“There’s a number of reasons we are seeing outbreaks,” says Kieran.

“Travel is one of the reasons; houses are a lot warmer now as well, so they’re inclined to survive a lot easier in houses and then a lot of the chemicals that we used to use years ago, such as DDT, are gone out of use now. “The stuff we use now is actually quite good – but bedbugs are very, very resilient.”

In the last year or so, he has received an increased number of requests to deal with bedbug infestations – and also with fleas.

Normally, says Kieran, the problems start when people go on holiday: “You’re could be staying in a hotel somewhere, or a B&B, or a hostel – or it could be like, as in France, you’re in a cinema, and if a female crawls on you, or on your bags, and then you bring a female home and she hatches eggs, that’s it then: that’s the whole process started in your house.”

The female doesn’t even have to travel at all: “She might just crawl into your bags and lay her eggs in your bag, and then you would then bring that bag home and then the eggs hatch out in your house.”

The difficulty is that the egg cases, which are white in colour, are tiny, and not always easy to spot. They are also very resistant to chemicals.

How long does it normally take to rid a home of an infection? There’s little comfort in Kieran’s answer to this question: “How long is a piece of string?” he responds.

Is it really that bad? “Yeah,” he says bluntly. But, he continues, the timeframe really hinges on the issue of how bad the infestation is.

“If you had a bad infestation, sometimes I would even recommend just get rid of the whole bed and reduce the numbers that are there. After that, it’s how many have you got; are there eggs there?

“A bedbug can live for up to a year without even feeding off you, so you might think, six months down the line, ‘grand, we’ve had no problems with them. We’ve had no issues; we’re home and dry’ – and next thing bam! You’re hit again because maybe they were just lying low for a while or maybe a batch of eggs hatched out. And then you’re back to square one. Again.”

While they may lurk or lay eggs in lamps, electrical sockets or bedside lockers, generally the bugs are found on the mattress or the bedframe.

“As you lie down, they detect that you’re in the room. Then they will crawl over you and then find your vein and give you a little local anaesthetic so that you don’t feel them sucking your blood.”

Whenever he stays away from home, Kieran always makes a point of actually rolling the sheets back and checking the mattress.

Telltale signs include little brown spots that are actually the bedbugs’ droppings.

Sadly, there’s no surefire way to avoid infestation, but Kieran’s advice is that immediately on coming home, take off your clothes and wash them at 60 degrees; do likewise with the clothes in your suitcase and spray the suitcase with an insecticide.