Comprehensive Pest Control and Prevention Services

Appearance
Adult bed bugs are oval and flattened like a small brownish-red disc, often described as the size of an apple seed and measuring between 4-6mm in length. Their shed skins are lighter brown and look like flaky exoskeletons. Their mouths are adapted especially for piercing skin and sucking blood. Bed bugs do not have wings, but they have six thick, well-developed legs, which enable them to crawl up most vertical surfaces. Their elongated eggs are whitish cream, developing a darker colour as they get ready to hatch into larvae. The early stages of the bed bug are called nymphs; these are tiny, making them hard to detect with the naked eye.
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Mating and lifespan
The bed bug’s life cycle develops in stages: egg, several immature nymph stages, and then adult. This process is called incomplete metamorphosis and can take 6 to 10 months. Other insects, such as fleas, develop by complete metamorphosis and have four stages: egg, larva, pupa and adult. Bed bugs reproduce by a rather grim ritual named “traumatic insemination”. This is where the male stabs the female’s abdomen and injects sperm into the wound. Female bed bugs lay 200 – 500 eggs over two months in batches of 10 to 50. The eggs are sticky and attach to items of furniture or fittings in clusters. Depending on conditions, eggs can hatch in about a week, and the newly hatched nymphs shed five times before reaching maturity. A blood meal is needed between each moult, and under favourable conditions with a ready supply of blood, they can mature in as little as a month and produce multiple generations per year
The typical lifespan of a bed bug is about ten months.
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Other characteristics
Like most blood-sucking arthropods, they inject saliva during feeding, which has anticoagulant properties, meaning the bite can go unnoticed at first. When not in use, a bed bug’s proboscis or “feeding tube” is tucked under its body. After a meal, the bug can increase by up to 50% in length and 200% in weight. Bed bugs respond to the warmth and carbon dioxide of a host and quickly locate a suitable feeding site. They can be in an inactive state for weeks or months and quickly “wake” when they detect biological signatures like CO2 . Bed bugs are nocturnal and usually start feeding when people are asleep. This is the safest time for them to get a meal, as they are less likely to get squished if detected. In heavily infested areas, bed bugs will become opportunistic and feed during the day if conditions are favourable. When alarmed, they move quickly and emit an odour. A 2013 study in the journal Nature Scientific Reports suggested that bedbugs have evolved ways to resist certain insecticides.
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The tell-tale signs bed bugs are about

• Signs of a bed bug infestation can often go unnoticed at first, as bites are attributed to other things like mosquito bites or allergic reactions. If you experience any of the following, you may have bed bugs: ƒ

• Red, irritating bites, typically in rows on your neck, shoulders, back, legs or arms ƒ

• Small reddish-brown clusters or dark faecal spots (about 1mm wide) that look like an ink dot are usually found on the bed frame, upholstery or the bottom side of the mattress ƒ

• Small blood smears on the bed linen or headboard ƒ

• Bed bug moult skins, palewhite eggs, empty eggshells are quite small but still visible to the human eye ƒ And the most obvious but not always the first sign you find 

• seeing the small brown insects themselves, in and around your bed frame or sleeping area.

If you are experiencing issues regarding these pests feel free to get in touch today and don't let the bedbugs bite.