Bed bugs don’t build nests. There is no woven structure, mound, tunnel, or collection of material assembled into a home. What people commonly call a bed bug nest is actually […]

Bed bugs do not show up because a home is dirty, smells a certain way, or contains a particular food. Unlike pests that enter a building looking for crumbs, garbage, […]

Bed bug bites usually don’t require prescription treatment, but the itching can be uncomfortable enough to make an over-the-counter cream or lotion useful. The products sold for itch relief don’t […]

The idea that a chigger burrows into your skin and has to be suffocated with nail polish or petroleum jelly is based on a myth. Chiggers remain on the surface […]

Ant bites and bed bug bites can both leave itchy skin lesions, but a fire ant encounter has a particularly useful clue: the ant usually bites to anchor itself and […]

A black light can reveal some material produced by bed bugs that may be difficult or impossible to see under ordinary lighting, but it cannot reliably tell you that a […]

Baby bed bugs, properly called nymphs, look like smaller, paler versions of adult bed bugs. They have six legs, two antennae, a broad oval abdomen, and the same generally flattened […]

A skin lesion blamed on a spider often turns out not to be a spider bite at all. In one prospective study of 182 emergency-department patients who believed they had […]

A bed bug detection dog can perform extremely well in a controlled test and considerably worse inside a real apartment. That gap is one of the most important things to […]

A mattress can contain dust mites without you ever seeing a single one. Bed bugs are different. Adults are plainly visible without magnification, which makes these two pests very different […]