Hey, i dont know if this site is still active but im really desperate for flea advice.
We just moved into a rental property where the previous owners had had pets and when we moved in we found that there was a bad flea infestation. The main living room is carpeted but the bedrooms are hardwood. We tried simply flea bombing the whole carpeted area but as expected from reading this sites articles they returned worse than ever within 3 days.
3 days ago the property manager got an exterminator to come and he sprayed the whole carpeted area and we haven’t since noticed any fleas on this. We dont intend to vaccuum until we have to, how long should we wait to vaccum to minimise the possibility of the fleas hatching and returning?
Also me and my friend havne’t had times to move our beds into our rooms yet so we’ve just been on mattresses in the floor. I’ve read that they don’t live on beds but is it an exception when the mattresses are just on the floor? I had been spraying bug poisen around my bed and sheets but just reccently found several fleas living underneath my mattress and im worried that they may have crawled under my sheets and laid eggs on the mattress itself. If this is the case, what is the best way to make sure my mattress is egg free, will bug spray/vaccuming be enough to deal with this?
Thanks in advance if you have time to reply.
After reading the first part of your message regarding the use of total release aerosol bombs, I thought maybe you had read our entire article. But when I got to the part that says you want to “wait to vacuum to minimize the possibility” of fleas hatching and returning, I realized you probably hadn’t read the important sections.
In our FLEA CONTROL article, we talk about the flea cycle. What’s important to understand here is that you CANNOT KILL FLEA PUPAE. Therefore you cannot get rid of a flea infestation with one treatment. This applies to sprays and aerosols. The only time the flea problem will be over is when all the pupae have hatched out. Now how long will this take? As our article explains, most cases take 2-4 weeks but we’ve seen where it can take 1-3 months. As our article explains, the pupae can lay dormant for up to a year and avoiding them means they’ll just lay around waiting. So you must take a pro active stand to get them to hatch and this means lot of vacuuming and lots of movement throughout the entire residence.
Furthermore, there are certain things you shouldn’t do if you want to expedite the process and one of them is to remove the pet. When no pets are around, the pupae are slow to hatch making the process take more time. So if you don’t have a pet, expect the process to take way longer than normal.
So for the time being, you have must decide if you wish to wait it out until all the flea pupae hatch or move away. To help speed up the process, setting out some FLEA TRAPS are strongly suggested. They can be a big help as explained here:
www.flea.net/bad-infestation/flea-control-in-rental-house.html
And spraying will help too because it will kill the adults that have most recently hatched. Spraying with some PRECOR 2000 or PERMETHRIN over all the flooring where fleas are found will no doubt help by killing the ones most recently hatched out. Just as long as you understand that within a few more days, more will be hatching so you’ll need to spray again.
Expect to be doing this twice a week till the problem is done. Of course, you can have someone do the work for you or handle it yourself but the point here is that this is the only way you’ll minimize the local population during the time it will take for them to run out. Now you might wonder why doesn’t the previous spray kill the fleas after they hatch? Well, it would if enough time elapsed during the time they hatched and when you see them. So when a flea pupae hatches, if you’ve sprayed properly in theory it should land on a treated surface. Well, that treatment would in fact kill them but the dying process will take 3-4 days. And since flea pupae only hatch when they see a target close enough to them so they know a blood meal is close by, it’s rare that they’ll hatch and not get on you well before the treatment can kill them. This is a big reason why flea problems can remain so long after treatments start.
Lastly, sleeping close to the floor will no doubt put you into the “flea range” meaning pupae will be able to see you as you sleep. This will cause them to hatch and attack. But you don’t have to worry about them living on or in the mattress. As our article explains, they only want on people or pets and since it sounds like you don’t have any pets, they’ll be targeting you and your house mates indefinitely. My suggestion here is to elevate the mattresses as high as possible and place a flea trap under them. This way they find the trap before the bed and the bed’s occupant.
Hope this helps explain what’s happening and what to expect for the next month or two. And here are direct links to the information and products listed above:
Flea Trap: http://www.bugspraycart.com/traps/electric/flea-trap
Precor 2000: www.bugspraycart.com/insecticide/aerosol/precor-2000
Permethrin 10: http://www.bugspraycart.com/insecticide/liquid/permethrin-10
Flea Article: www.flea.net/flea-control
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