What Are Bed Bugs
Bed bugs are small, blood-feeding insects, about the size of half a pinky nail once grown, and easy to see with the naked eye. They’re difficult to fully get rid of for two reasons: they lay 5 to 7 eggs a day that hatch in 2 to 3 weeks, so missing even a few lets the infestation rebuild fast, and they can survive up to a year without feeding, which lets them hide and wait you out.
They feed at night, close to wherever you sleep, and as an infestation grows they spread into cracks, baseboards, dressers, clothing, and furniture throughout the room.
Signs of an Infestation
Not sure if what you're seeing is actually bed bugs? Start with your sheets. Bed bugs often overfeed and leave behind small blood-drop stains, and check under your mattress folds and seams, since they like to cluster together. Look for frass (droppings — black, about the size of a pepper flake), eggs (pearly white, about 1mm, shaped like a grain of rice), shed casings, or live bugs.
Don't go by bites alone. Other insect bites, allergic reactions, and skin conditions get mistaken for bed bug bites all the time — carpet beetle larvae especially. A real bed bug has six legs, three body segments, and antennae. If what you're looking at doesn't, it isn't one. If you're still not sure, that's exactly what the inspection is for.
Heat Treatment: How It Actually Works
We don’t just put a heater in the room and hope. Here’s the real process:
1. Mechanical Removal — Before any heat goes on, we lift beds, take apart bed frames where possible,
and vacuum up every egg, bug, and dropping we can find.
2. The Heat Treatment Itself — We vent heat into the room and add air movers to circulate it, turning the space into a convection oven so heat reaches evenly . Rooms reach up to about 165°F in a house and 145°F in an apartment. Research from Virginia Tech shows bed bugs die within 20 minutes at 118°F, and instantly at 125°F. We treat well past that, with a wide margin of safety, and monitor the whole time with a thermal camera to confirm every part of the room actually gets there.
3. Apprehend Application — Every heat treatment is followed by an Apprehend application, catching anything that survived somewhere heat couldn’t fully reach — deep inside a mattress, packed inside wall insulation, buried in a pile of clothes.
Why We use Apprehend
Apprehend is a naturally-derived fungal treatment, not a standard pesticide. It attaches to a bed bug and grows, and because bed bugs cluster together, it spreads through the group as they interact, reaching cracks and crevices a direct spray never touches. Bed bugs have no known resistance or cross-resistance to it, and it stays active for up to 90 days. (Crossfire, another leading chemical treatment, lists a 4-week residual on its label — once that window closes, any bugs that survived are free to keep feeding and laying eggs as normal.)
What Affects Your Price
Every quote comes after the inspection, not before — a price given over the phone without seeing the space is a guess, and we don’t guess. What actually moves the number
As a starting point:
Heat treatment - $1,500 (includes mechanical removal and apprehend treatment)
Chemical Treatment - $600 (Apprehend treatment only)