Bed Bugs are one of very few pests that pose such a difficult challenge when it comes to controlling them. They are hard to find, persistent and increasingly more abundant. If that wasn’t bad enough research is showing stains of bed bugs that are becoming resistant to pyrethroid insecticides throughout the unit states.
These creatures feed on you when you are asleep and then return to their harborage only leaving you with an annoying, nasty, itching welts as a sign they have been there.
The common bed bug are relatively small bugs that are about 3/16 inch long, 1/8 inch wide, broadly oval, flat, brown to reddish-brown true bugs with 3 segmented beak, 4 segmented antennae and vestigial wings. Prior to feeding, nymphs appear translucent or pale in color. Bed bugs have very thing, vertically flattened bodies covered with short, golden-colored hairs. The female bed bug lays between 200 to 500 eggs (in groups of 10 to 50) on rough surfaces such bedding, paper, wood etc. Eggs are covered with cement and hatch in about 10 days.
There are five progressively larger nymph stages, each requiring a single blood meal before molting to the next stage. The entire bed bug life cycle from egg to adult takes from 5 weeks to 4 months. Adults bed bugs live up to 10 months.
Here are the facts about Bed Bugs:
Bed Bugs are flat, brown, wingless and about 1/4 inch long. They have 6 legs, shiny reddish-brown but after a good serving of your blood, they appear dark brown and swollen as in the picture below.
They can be seen with the human eye, but do a great job at hiding. Bed bugs are not known to spread diseases as of yet. They feed on human blood, preferring to do so in the dark when you’re sleeping
These bugs love to hide in the seams, crevices, and holes in:
- Mattress and Box Spring
- Sofa seams
- Cracks in the bed frame and/or head board
- Under chairs, couches, beds and dust covers
- Under rugs, edges of carpets, drawers, baseboards and window casings
- Behind light switches, electrical outlet plates, cracks in plaster
- Televisions, radio clocks, phones, computers
- Backpacks, Sleeping bags, Clothes
- Behind wallpaper, picture frames, and other dark areas
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