One of the most reviled and least understood pest species known to man is the bed bug (Cimex lectularius). How many of us fell asleep to sleep at night as children with the parting words of our guardians in our ears “sleep tight and don’t let the bed bugs bite”?
Bed Bugs may have started to dine on man at about the period we moved into caves, the bat bugs Cimex pilosellus and Cimex pipistrella mainly fed on bats and it is a fair chance that bat feeding species of bug evolved to feed on human blood when our forebears started living} in bat infested caves.
Up to the production of DDT in the early 20th century bed bugs were commonplace unwelcome guests in most low quality homes.
The later years of the 20th century saw pest control companies called out to very few bed bug infestations indeed, their presence being largely restricted to budget holiday homes and student lodgings etc.
Most people confuse dust mites, which aren’t visible to the naked, with bed bugs which certainly.
Adult bedbugs are reddy-brown, about a quarter of an inch in size and very swollen after a feed of human blood.
Bed bugs usually feed on human blood every few days, appearing in the early hours of the morning and locating their target by detecting the exhaled CO2 from human breath and when close in on their target, they sense infra red heat.
Without a suitable human host to feed on they can stay dormant for periods of up to a year or more.
Often the first sign of a bed bug infestation are spots of blood on bedding and on the corners of mattresses and many people can react badly to the bites of these bugs.
The early part of this century has seen bed bug infestations multiplying all over the planet, the easy availability of world travel and economic migration have both been given as reasons for the resurgence.
What is certain is that that are now making a real fightback not only in cheaper quality housing but high class hotels, schools and even hospitals.
One London borough reported a doubling of bed bug infestations every year from 1995 to 2001.
|One night stay in an infested bed is all it needs, they catch a ride in your suitcases or bags. Pest control companies are also now reporting cases of transport related bed bug infestations on tubes, trains and buses so a simple journey to work on an infested tube or train can be sufficient to bring these bugs to your own home.
They are an tricky pest to deal with as contrary to popular notion they do not just live in beds. They infest any nook and cranny conveniently close to a sleeping human being, beds, electrical sockets, televisions, bed side telephones etc and dealing with them is both laborious and time consuming. They have even been discovered found living under the toe-nails of infirm people and in the folds of flesh on very overweight people.
They are not a pest that can be tackled by an amateur and a pest control professional will almost certainly be required.
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