11 Useful Facts About Bed Bugs You Need To Know

There’s little worse than waking up to itchy sweltering bite marks on your skin, after a night of disturbed sleep. Discovering bed bugs in your bed is annoying and causes major anxiety in the household. 

Having your place of rest infested with bed bugs can cause sleepless nights even long after they’ve gone, purely for the fear that they might return. That’s why it’s important to know the facts about the tricky pest so that you can avoid all future encounters with them. 

Bed Bugs Don’t Just Live In Beds

If they feel like their environment is under threat, such as being fumigated, bed bugs can wait it out in a number of hiding spots. This can include luggage, floor boards, cracks in the wall, and even sometimes kitchen appliances. 

Of course, none of these places is as comfortable and as close to their target as a bed, hence why this is their number one place of hiding. However, don’t be fooled and think you’ve rid your room of bed bugs because you’ve put pesticide on your mattress and they could be waiting nearby for safety. 

Bed Bugs Can Numb Their Hosts

Unlike a mosquito, bed bugs can be hardly noticeable until it’s too late. You may be sleeping soundly and suddenly wake up to a raging itch and inflamed skin. This is because bed bugs actually have a natural anesthetic in their saliva. This makes your skin numb at the bite site so as not to wake you up, letting the bugs feed in peace. 

Bed Bugs Are Resilient 

If you thought bed bugs were seasonal creatures, you are sorely mistaken. Bed bugs can live in extreme temperatures varying from 46 degrees Fahrenheit to 120 degrees Fahrenheit. What is even more troubling is that eggs can live in temperatures as low as -13 degrees Fahrenheit, so even if the live bugs have died off from the cold, their offspring will live on. 

There has also been evidence that the most persistent bed bugs have started to become resistant to the traditional pesticides. They are also able to not feed for up to 3 months! This is a scary thought, considering time and “starving the bugs out” is a common method suggested to get rid of them. Depending on how bad the infestation is, all of the above methods may not work, at least for a while. 

Bed Bugs Love Activity

As much as we’d like to think that keeping clean is a way to rid ourselves of human-blood feeding mites, this is simply not the case. Pests like bed bugs and lice will thrive anywhere, as long as humans are around. A dirty apartment block or unclean bed isn’t the only way to get bed bugs. 

However, bed bugs are attracted to humans, so the more humans that have slept on the bed the more likely the bed bugs are to thrive. Hotels and motels are the most prone to bed bugs, especially if they are situated in urban areas in buildings that contain a condensed amount of people who travel frequently. 

Bed Bugs Can Contract Human Pathogens 

As scary as that sounds, this is only bad news for the bugs, as there has been no evidence that suggests the bugs are contracting and spreading pathogens like mosquitoes. 

Bed Bugs Are Surprisingly Smart

Despite not being the smartest species in the animal world, bed bugs do have some impressively keen instincts. One of the main reasons why bed bugs have been around for so long is because of their ability to hide. Bed bugs know where to hide, and will always opt for dark warm places where they can wait for nightfall before feeding. 

An incredibly smart way bed bugs can tell when it is safe to come out of their crevices is when a room’s CO2 levels have risen. This happens when a human sleeps in a room with little oxygen entering when the windows and doors are shut. Humans will also fill a room with CO2 emissions from being in it for a consecutively long amount of time. This is exactly when bed bugs will strike. 

Female Bed Bugs Lay Hundreds Of Eggs 

To ensure the survival of the bed bug species, female bugs have to lay hundreds of eggs in their lifespan, and they do exactly that. A bug can lay up to 5 eggs a day, which means it can lay between 200-500 eggs in its lifetime in favorable conditions. 

Bed Bugs Only Like Live Prey

Bed bugs are only known to feed on live “fresh” blood. So no blood stains or spilt blood will satisfy the picky pest. This makes them excellent detectors of warm-blooded humans, making them one of the most annoying pests to date. 

Bed Bugs Can Consume An Impressive Amount Of Blood

It’s rather unpleasant to think about, but have you ever wondered why such a tiny pest can leave such large and inflamed marks on its victims? This is because bed bugs can consume seven times their own body’s weight worth of blood. That’s like an average human consuming 120 gallons of liquid at once. The more blood loss, the worse the bite, which is why bed bug bites can look even bigger than mosquito bites.

Bed Bugs Move Slowly

In its lifetime a bed bug’s traveling will consist of moving from its host to safer places of nesting, however, this can be a slow process. Bed bugs are tiny, smaller than the human eye can see, which means they will only move at a pace of around 3-4 feet a minute.

Bed Bugs Can’t Climb Up A Smooth Surface

This is why bed bugs stick to furniture or rough surfaces like walls or floors. You can use their inability to climb to your advance by placing a piece of furniture that might have bed bugs into a tub while disinfecting. This will prevent the bugs from sticking to your floorboards and will end up in the tub where they can be washed away or poisoned, as they can’t fly or jump either. 

Being privy to the knowledge of bedbugs and their habits is useful in the case of an infestation. But sometimes, knowledge doesn’t equal eradication! 

If you need help getting rid of these pests give Twin-Boro a call. Everyone deserves a peaceful night’s sleep!