How To Exterminate Bed Bugs

Bed bugs are a growing source of aggravation, especially in the developed Western world, because bedbugs were largely wiped out there by the late 1950’s. This means that most people under 50 years of age had probably never seen a bedbug until after 1995, when they made a big return. Their numbers are still increasing quickly, so a lot people are turning to thinking about killing bed bugs.

This is due to two major factors: their natural hardiness and their resistance to modern household chemical pesticides. Their natural resilience is due to a waxy coating on their bodies which protects them from surfactant pesticides to a great extent and their tolerance to chemical pesticides is most likely due to the fact that they were exterminated in the West in the 1940’s and 1950’s by the widespread use of DDT.

The waxy coating of bedbugs prevents their rapid dehydration, which is why they can lie dormant for up to five months waiting for a suitable host to come along. It is also the reason why a lot of contact pesticides are ineffective. Therefore, one of the techniques for killing bed bugs is getting rid of that waxy coating.

People knew this 150 years ago, but they lacked the technology to really take advantage of the information. People often used to put down crushed dried leaves or sharp sand. In the 19th century, lime, ash and diatomaceous earth were utilized to wear away the outer waxy coating. The latter was especially effective and has seen an increase in usage over the last few years as an option to chemicals.

One method of killing bed bugs that will not work is catching them and crushing them, even if you did wrap sticky insect bands around the legs of your bed. Bed bugs cannot fly, but they would still get at you. They are not averse to traipsing up to the ceiling and dropping on to you.

If you want to try chemical insecticides, then there are three basic types. The first sort attempts to mimic the effects of diatomaceous earth. It is a spray that includes pulverized glass or silica mixed with a contact pesticide. This does not sound a healthy environment for humans or pets either though. Breathing powdered glass or silica seems like bad news.

Contact insecticides have limited effect, to a degree due to the waxy layer, but also because to be effective they have to be strong and this makes them a repellent, which means that the bedbugs will just avoid it if they can.

Insect growth regulators are effective at killing the young, which is great, but the adults can live for about a year, so that is not so good, unless you are thinking about a long world cruise.

Professionals frequently use steam these days, because none of the bed bug’s life stages can withstand temperatures above 45c, so you could try this technique by hiring a steam wall paper stripper or a hot air paint stripper for the weekend and going over your walls and woodwork. In fact, if all your wall paper and paint is going to fall off, you may as well combine the session with your next redecoration.

Owen Jones, the writer of this piece, writes on many subjects, but is at present concerned with bed bugs extermination. If you are interested in this, please go over to our website now at Picture Of Bed Bugs for further details.

New York And Its Latest Invaders

The most recent invaders in New York are living proof that New York does go to sleep from time to time, because that is when these little nightmares come out to get you. It used to be rats that plagued New York, now it animals small enough to live on rats in their dozens. I am talking about Cimex lectularius, the bed bug that specializes in preying on people.

Nobody really knows how many species of bed bugs there are, some say seventy odd others say a hundred and odd. Most of them prefer animals, particularly birds and bats, but a lot of them will drink human blood if there is nothing else around. Cimex lectularius is the only one which prefers human blood and they have hit New York big time. They have literally got New Yorkers trembling in their beds.

The sad reality is that bed bugs were thought to have been wiped out in the United States in the 1950’s. Long-haul travellers and immigrants have been blamed for the sporadic outbursts of bedbugs in the past, but incidents of bedbugs has reached epidemic proportions. In 2004, there were only 82 attested infestations in New York, in 2009, just five years later, there were 10,985!

They are pretty swift creatures, preferring to live close to the host, they can make a withdrawal from your blood bank often within ten minutes, faster than you can make a withdrawal from an inner city ATM. The majority of bed bugs have drunk their fill within five minutes of finding you and they can find you very quickly. Bed bugs use body heat and CO2 emissions to locate their victims and then use pheromones to tell their friends and family where you are as well.

This is why a host is usually bitten a dozen times or more, not just once like when there is a single mosquito in your bedroom or three times, which is the mark of a flea. Like flea bites, bed bug bites are frequently in a row of three though.

Fortunately for us, bedbugs transmit no known diseases, although numerous bites can lead to anaemia and an impaired immune system, which could make you open to other diseases. Hosts sometimes develop obsessional behavioural patterns and insomnia, which also has its consequences.

Bedbugs are born from eggs, which are laid one, two or three a day. They take about ten days to hatch out into translucent nymphs about a millimetre or so long. These must also feed on blood. As they grow, they discard their skins. After six moultings they are mature bed bugs and can breed.

Bedbugs feed about every five days, during which time they rest in the dingy crevice that they call home and sleep it off. Their lifespan is between five months and a year, but they can become inactive for five months, if there is no food about. A female will lay about three hundred eggs in her life.

It used to be supposed that bedbugs lived in dirtiness, but this is not the case. However, they do like to be where humans assemble and they like dark crevices to live in: loose headboards, bed frames, skirting boards and architraves are definite favourites.

Owen Jones, the writer of this piece, writes on many subjects, but is at present concerned with getting rid of bedbugs? If you are interested in this, please visit our website now at Picture Of Bed Bugs for further information.

Bed Bugs: Unwelcome Bed Fellows

Bed bugs are a constant worry, if you suspect that they are in the bed with you. In fact, it is known that when people have been bitten often, they can become anxious, strained and obsessed. Insomnia soon follows. This predicament can quickly lead to irritability, domestic arguments and the loss of your job.

This obsession can obviously get out of hand unless you do something about it soon. If you are in a hotel, then you have to tell the manager immediately. If you are in rented accommodation, then your landlord has the responsibility to keep his property pest free, but if it is your own place, you have a problem. Or at least, you can get the issue sorted out, but it will cost you.

The Latin name for the species of bed bug that only drinks human blood is Cimex lectularius and they were first written about in Greece in about 400 BC. They did not arrive in Great Britain in large numbers until about 1670 and by 1726, they were in Jamaica and almost certainly the United States as well.

Bedbugs were exterminated from the developed world by and large by the late 1950’s due to the widespread use of pesticides such as DDT to constrain other household pests like ants and cockroaches.

Unfortunately|Regrettably, this has led to bedbugs being resistant to nearly all modern, domestic pesticides. The resurgence of bed bugs is blamed on increased foreign travel and higher levels of immigration from Asia and Africa.

It is generally believed that bedbugs only bite humans, but that is not right. Cimex lectularius only bites humans, but almost all warm-blooded animals have their own parasites, which could be called bedbugs.

Cats, dogs, deer, horses and birds (together with poultry) have their own bedbugs and these bed bugs will bite humans as well, if their preferred source of a blood meal is not around.

Bedbugs are quite small, being about a quarter of an inch long and a bit narrower. The are very flat and thin, so that they look as if they have been squashed. They are fairly agile when empty, but slow and cumbersome when swollen on blood.

They are most often brown in colour, bur they can be almost any shade, even white, until they have fed and then there is always at least a hint of red about them.

Bedbugs need to shed their skin six times before they become adult and can lay inactive for five months without food. They are aroused by body heat and CO2 and can signal their comrades that food is about by the discharge of pheromones.

Bedbugs prefer to live in narrow cracks and crevices. They like loose skirtings and architraves, damaged plaster and wall paper, ripped mattresses and loose joints in timber furniture. They will even hole up, quite literally, in a the sunken-screw hole – the countersink.

Bedbug bites often look like mosquito bites, but there is no red dot and they can take longer to come up and longer to go down and like flea bites, bedbug bites are often in a line of three.

Owen Jones, the writer of this article, writes on many subjects, but is at present concerned with bed bugs extermination. If you are interested in this, please visit our website now at Picture Of Bed Bugs for more information.

Good Night, Sleep Tight, Don’t Let The Bed Bugs Bite

‘Good Night, Sleep Tight, Don’t Let The Bed Bugs Bite’ is something that people said often to their children in the first half of the 20th Century. Some mothers still say it even now, but before they really meant it, because there were bed bugs – everywhere. Western cities were severely stricken with them and had been for three hundred years or longer.

Bed bugs were exterminated in the Forties and Fifties by the widespread use of DDT, which has since been prohibited. In 1995, reported cases of bed bug infestations rose sharply for the first time in fifty years. The number of bed bug incidents has been increasing ever since. Therefore, the saying ‘Good Night, Sleep Tight, Don’t Let The Bed Bugs Bite’ has become pertinent again.

The trouble is that it is very, very hard to prevent them biting and it is almost as hard to eradicate them, because modern bedbugs have become almost totally resistant to the pesticides that we have on hand to us today.

Scientists in several companies are working on chemicals to kill bedbugs, but as of yet, there has not been a lot of advancement. Pharaoh ant venom is lethal to bedbugs, but it is proving tricky to manufacture in suitable volumes.

If you suspect that you have bed bugs, you will probably have seen a few bugs, have had a few bites or have seen bedbug droppings. Bed bugs are small, brown, wingless insects about three-sixteenths of an inch long and a little rounded on top although their general appearance is flattish.

Bedbug bites frequently result in bumps, which may come up up to nine days after you were bitten. Occasionally they are in rows of three like flea bites. They are usually itchy. Bed bug droppings are brown. They often look like brown streaks on a sheet.

If you have bedbugs, there is not a lot you can do yourself. Bedbugs do not necessarily live in squalid conditions. However, they do like untidiness, because it provides more hiding places. If you have had books, magazines or clothes lying in the same place for weeks, move them to see if bedbugs come out.

If you are in hired accommodation, get in touch with your landlord. If you own your own home, you have a big problem. The first move should be to check with your local heath authorities for the phone number of a reputable, experienced, professional pest controller.

While you are waiting for them to come round, tidy away all your clutter and strip your beds. Bedbugs, in all their forms, are killed by temperatures above 46C (120F), so either put your clothes on a boil wash or put them in the clothes dryer on a hot temperature.

A competent pest controller will inspect your property thoroughly and give you a detailed report and a price tag. The report will include an action plan of how to get ready for treatment and prevent further infestation. The price of the clean-up should be based on this report, it should not be a flat fee.

Owen Jones, the author of this piece, writes on many topics, but is currently concerned with how do you get bed bugs? If you are interested in this, please go over to our website now at Picture Of Bed Bugs for more information.

How To Get Rid Of Bed Bugs

It is doubtful that you grew up with bed bugs and the chances of you having come across one over the last fifteen years is still reasonably slender, but the chances are increasing. In some parts of the world’s inner cities, the incidence of bed bug encounters has risen by up to 100% per annum since the year 2000. Another report says that of 700 hotels surveyed, twenty-five percent of them had issues relating to bedbug infestation.

The key problem with bed bugs is their detection. Not everyone has a reaction to bed bug bites and if they do, it can take up to nine days to develop. That means that you could easily reprimand a hotel for the infestation, when you were bitten thousands of miles away on a different continent.

This can be a real difficulty if you travel a great deal. Then there is the fact that bedbug bites are not easily discernible. There is no red mark in the middle of the swelling as with mosquito bites, but they are frequently in rows of three, just like flea bites.

The good news is that although bedbugs are capable of passing on human diseases, they never have done so far to date. However, it is a frightening possibility, if it ever were to happen.

The bad news is that they are hardly affected by normal domestic insecticides. This is because bed bugs have become virtually immune to the average insecticides available on the shelf in your supermarket. Bedbugs also have a waxy top coat, which inhibits surfactant pesticides from being totally successful in destroying them.

Therefore, the most successful bedbug killers attempt to scrape off this waxy top coat. Some bedbug sprays do this by incorporating powered glass or powdered silica, which attaches itself to that waxy coat. As the insect wriggles itself into narrow crevices, the powder abrades the wax. This then allows the pesticides to do their job. The downside of this methodology is that it will take several days to get rid of them.

Professional bedbug exterminators use steam to get rid of an infestation these days. This is because no stage of the bed bug’s life, egg, nymph or adult can survive temperatures above 45c. If you want to try getting rid of your bedbugs yourself, you could hire a wall paper steam stripper or buy a hot air paint stripper. These will produce a temperature sufficient to destroy bedbugs.

The locations where bedbugs like to go into hiding are behind loose skirtings and architraves, in cracks in plaster and behind tears in wall paper. Their number one favourite of all time though is inside a ripped or torn mattress. They like to be as near to their victims as they can, which is something to keep in mind, when you go looking for bed bugs’ hiding places.

The other way of solving your bed bug problem is to call in the experts. This is also the best, if the most expensive, method of doing it, but at least you will know that your bedbug problem is over and you should have a guarantee too.

Owen Jones, the author of this piece, writes on many subjects, but is currently involved with bed bugs spray. If you are interested in this, please visit our website now at Picture Of Bed Bugs for more details.

Just What Are Bed Bugs?

If you wake up one day with itchy lumps on your body, you will probably think that you had been bitten by mosquitoes or ants the night beforehand, but there is also a possibility that bedbugs have got at you. If this happens in your own bed, then you have problems. If you are in a hotel, go and complain to the manager.

You can be sure that most hotel managers will take complaints about bed bugs very gravely, because it is well known that the numbers of bedbugs are rising rapidly and have been since 1995. It is also common knowledge that large compensation awards have been made against hotels. Some of them were at hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Most so-called ‘bed bugs’ will only feed on humans if their favourite host, often chickens, are not available, but there is one that only feeds on human blood and that species is called Cimex lectularius.

Cimex lectularius was virtually extinct in the developed world by the late 1950’s because of the extensive use of DDT in residences and hotels to eradicate all insects such as ants, bed bugs, silverfish, millipedes and cockroaches.

However, there has been a massive revival in the number of bedbugs since 1995. In fact, between 1995 and 2001, one report on bedbugs in London reported that incidents of bedbug call-outs had doubled each year.

The resurgence in bedbug numbers has been ascribed to global travel and immigration from Asia and Africa. However, it is also likely that they were never completely eradicated and that they have become tolerant to modern pesticides. There is not much you can put down or spray around now that will kill bedbugs.

So, what do bedbugs look like? Well, there are lots of different types of bed bugs, but most of them are brownish, unless they have just fed and then there is a red tint to them. However, they can also be white to yellowish. Occasionally, they look banded because bedbugs are covered with short hairs which reflect light like a striped lawn.

Bedbugs have a beak-like mouth-piece with two tubes. One tube squirts saliva into you and the other sucks blood out. The spittle contains anti-coagulant and a pain-killer, so that you do not know that you have been bitten until long after the bedbug has gone home.

Some people never know, because they are not allergic to the saliva, others get a bump or slight swelling almost immediately, but sometimes the swelling can take a week to come out. These bites may or may not be itchy.

If you travel a lot, or if you go to regions of the world that are less concerned with hygiene, you must be careful about not taking bedbugs home with you. They will not remain on your body, but they may lay eggs in your clothing or hide in your suitcase. Therefore, either before you go home or without delay on arrival have your clothes washed at a temperature above 46c and blast your suitcase with a jet of steam or hot air.

Owen Jones, the writer of this article, writes on many subjects, but is at present concerned with bed bugs extermination. If you are interested in this, please go over to our website now at Picture Of Bed Bugs for further information.

Looking At Bedbugs

There are actually quite a few varieties of bed bug, but the one that most people are referring to by ‘bedbugs’ is Cimex lectularius. Other species of bedbugs will extract human blood, but normally only if their favoured host, like poultry, is not around.

Bedbugs are small, but not too small to see. Adults are about four or five millimetres in length and one-and-a-half to three millimetres in width. They are brownish in colour, but may appear banded because they are covered in short hairs.

Having said that, they are still not easy to have a close look at, because they are very quick and only come out at night. In fact, their preferred dinner time is more of an early breakfast, because they normally dine on us an hour before dawn. If you want to find or catch some bedbugs, this is the best time too do it, because you may see them trying to get home with full stomachs to sleep it off for a few days before setting out again.

So, rather than waste your time, it is probably better to look at a number of pictures of bedbugs first so that you know what you are looking for.. Bedbugs are attracted by heat and CO2, so one method of trying to catch a few is putting a bar of soap in a centimetre of water and then lying on the bed. After half an hour, get the soap and whip the bed clothes back. You can dab up any bed bugs with the soap.

Then you will have plenty of time to study them under a magnifying glass. If they are not residing in your mattress and you are sure that you have bed bugs, check behind any loose-fitting woodwork.

They love to get into dark crevices to sleep it off and skirting boards or architrave are ideal. So is damaged plaster, broken lino or ripped wall paper.

Hardly any crack is too thin for them, because they are so flat themselves, as you can observe from photos. They look as if they have been flattened. However, the nymphs or babies are very small, a bit rounder and frequently whitish. It takes six moultings for a nymph to become an adult and the moulted skins look just like the insect that left it, but with nothing inside it – as if it had been sort of sucked out.

The bedbug’s skin is actually the key to killing it, as bedbugs have become tolerant to most everyday insecticides. Their skin, or exoskeleton, has a waxy layer on it to prevent dehydration. If you can scrape off that wax, the insect will dry out and die.

Some modern bedbug sprays include finely powdered glass or silicone which sticks to the insect and as it wriggles into crevices, the powder rubs the wax off. Diatomaceous earth was used for the same reason long ago and it is making a comeback in the fight to exterminate bed bugs. It is non-toxic and environmentally friendly, so safe to use in your home and around your pets.

Owen Jones, the writer of this article, writes on many subjects, but is currently involved with bed bugs extermination. If you are interested in this, please go over to our website now at Picture Of Bed Bugs for more information.