The Spring Valley Bedbug Life Cycle
Depending on conditions, bed bugs can take as long as 5 months to develop from egg to engorged adult or as little as 4 weeks.
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Spring Valley Bedbugs Are Tough
Although bed bugs will feed nightly from your blood, they are very hardy insects and can live for a year or longer without feeding at all.
They can survive winter in an unheated building and both adults and nymphs can live for prolonged periods without food and under adverse temperature conditions.
An adult bed bug is about 1/5 inch long and 1/8 inch wide. It has a brown oval shaped body which is flat before feeding and engorged after feeding. Although the body is covered with tiny hairs, they are pretty much invisible to the naked eye.
The general body appearance is shiny. Bed bugs have piercing-sucking mouth parts that enable them to pierce the skin and suck blood from their hosts. While people like you are the preferred host for the common bed bug, it will feed readily on other animals, such as poultry, mice, rats, canaries, dogs, and cats when necessary.
Bedbugs have been found to carry the causative agents for several diseases, such as anthrax, plague, tularemia, yellow fever, relapsing fever and typhus. However, there is little evidence that they carry these disease organisms under normal conditions, so they are not considered an important factor in disease transmission. Still, better to be safe than sorry.
Normally the Spring Valley bed bugs feed at night, but they will feed during daylight hours in places such as theaters, offices, and rest rooms that are not ordinarily used at night.
Bed bug females lay between 200 and 500 eggs during their lifetime in batches of three to four eggs per day. These eggs hatch after 6 to 17 days. Nymphal bed bugs molt five to six times before becoming adults. Under the best conditions, the life cycle is complete in four to five weeks, but since ideal conditions are rarely found it can take four to five months. Adult bed bugs can live 10 months or more without food. Nymphal bed bugs are known to survive for more than two months without feeding.
Bed bugs tend to live in clusters in a very similar manner to some species of cockroaches. Adult bed bugs generally travel 15 to 20 feet, or less from where the eggs were laid. Common bed bugs feed on human blood just below the surface of the skin with their piercing-sucking mouth parts. Those bitten by a bed bug may develop small, white to red, hard welts at the bite site. These bites itch intensely.
Bed bugs feed exclusively at night. They take approximately three to five minutes to engorge on blood. Once feeding is complete, they return to their cluster. The cluster spot is typically marked by dried out blood spots. Feedings take place every few days and nymphs require approximately six blood meals for complete development.
Bed Bugs Are Becoming More Common in Spring Valley
Until a few years ago, bedbug infestations had virtually disappeared from Spring Valley and, if fact, from the United States generally.
Prior to World War II, bed bug infestations were common but the development of synthetic organic insecticides such as DDT and chlordane almost 70 years ago virtually wiped them out. Today, bedbugs can be found in every State in the United States, and almost every city.
Bedbugs are so common now that the federal government considers them almost "epidemic". The National Pest Management Association has declared war on bed bugs and has held bedbug meetings all across the Nation to help educate pest control companies in an effort to help control them.
Your Spring Valley pest control expert has everything necessary to remove them completely. Because of the nature of the bedbug life cycle, it may take up to three treatments or even more.
The most frequent bed bug encountered in the United States is Cimes lectularius, the common bed bug. However, one other bed bug species occasionally found in the southern United States, is Cimex hemiperus, the tropical bed bug. Both of these species are oval, flat and reddish brown. They range from one-fourth inch to five-eighths inch in length. Nymphs and adults have piercing-sucking mouthparts and are incapable of flight. However, small stubby wing remnants can be observed on the adults.
Bed Bugs Can Be Hard to Find
They can live in cracks in furniture or in any type of textile, including upholstered furniture. Bedbug infestations are most common in beds, including the mattress, box springs, and bed frames. Bedbugs are most active at night. These pests may bite any exposed areas of skin while an individual is sleeping. Common locations for bedbug bites are the face, neck, hands, and arms.
Are bedbug bites painful?
A bedbug bite is painless and is generally not noticed. The bites may be mistaken for a rash of another cause. Small, flat, or raised bumps on the skin are the most common sign. Symptoms include redness, swelling, and itching.
Even the possibility of bedbugs being present is enough for some people to feel itchy and start scratching.
Although home remedies are available, your best bet to get rid of a bed bug infestation permanently is to call your Spring Valley pest control expert.