How to Confirm Bed Bugs in a Sandhurst Home

Level One: Suspicion

What it is: bites, a bad night, something you thought you saw, or somebody else's report.

Good enough for: going and looking. Nothing else.

Not good enough for: buying anything, throwing anything away, reporting it as fact, or moving out of the room. Every one of those gets done at level one and every one of them is premature.

Level Two: Physical Evidence

What it is: dark spotting clustered in a seam that smears on a damp cloth, pale cast skins in a joint, or millimetre eggs cemented into fabric.

Good enough for: acting. Booking a treatment, reporting it to a landlord in writing, telling the household to follow the rules. This is the level most jobs are booked at and it is a perfectly sound basis.

Worth knowing: a single one of the three is enough. You do not need all three and you do not need a live insect.

Level Three: A Specimen

What it is: an actual insect, caught and kept, or a sharp close-up photograph of one.

Good enough for: everything, including settling a dispute and ruling out the alternatives. It is the only level that closes off the possibility of it being carpet beetle, fleas or spider beetles.

How to get there: catch it in a small clear sealed bag or a jar. Do not squash it first. If you cannot catch it, photograph it against something for scale — a coin, a fingertip, the edge of a ruler.

What Does Not Count, However Convincing

• Bites, of any pattern. Reaction varies too much between people
• An itchy night or a feeling of something crawling
• Dark specks with no location — spotting matters because it clusters in a seam; scattered specks on an open surface are dirt
• Somebody else's diagnosis from a photograph of a rash
• A previous problem at the address. Relevant history, not current evidence

Getting to Certainty When Nothing Turns Up

It happens, and there are three honest possibilities: it is very new, you are looking at the wrong bed, or it is not bed bugs.

1. Check every bed in the property, not just the one with the bites
2. Check the beds nobody sleeps in as well
3. Do the check again in a fortnight — a new infestation leaves almost nothing and will not stay that way
4. Consider a night check with a torch, once
5. If there is a pet, rule out fleas properly
6. Then ask for an inspection rather than continuing to guess

Sandhurst: Confirmation for Somebody Else

If you are reporting to a landlord, an agent or a housemate, level two with photographs is what you want, and the photographs matter as much as the finding.

• Photograph the evidence in place before touching it — where it was found is half of what it proves
• Then a close-up, with something for scale
• Note the date, the room and exactly where on the bed
• Send it in writing rather than saying it, and keep the reply