Bedbugs do not discriminate
By Tom Allen
Unlike cockroaches or flies that live in filth, there is no relationship between bed bugs and clean environments. Bed bugs feed only on blood. Clean, upscale homes can be as easy to infest as run down filthy homes. Poverty is often associated with bad bed bug infestation problems due to the lack of affordable pest control. College Students traveling from other countries often travel with bed bugs and introduce them to the university dorms. Today’s student housing takes this very seriously and has strict preventative procedures for new arriving students to be inspected before check in.
Blood sucking bed bugs are tough to eradicate. Female bed bugs may lay from 200 to 500 eggs in batches of 50. The eggs are covered with a type of glue and hatch in about 10 days. The entire life cycle from egg to adult requires anywhere from 5 weeks to 4 months depending on temperature and host availability for blood meals.
This is a video of a bed bug feeding in the lab.
Bed bugs can go without a feeding for 80 to 140 days. Adults have survived in laboratories without food for as long as 550 days. A bed bug can take six times its weight in blood. Adults can live about 10 months and there can be many generations per year.
…But hang in there. Killing bedbugs with heat equipment is the only treatment with 100% efficacy for all stages of life from eggs through nymphs to adults.
