What Are Bed Bugs?

Posted by Owen Jones

If you wake up one day with prickly lumps on your body, you will probably think that you had been bitten by mosquitoes or ants the night beforehand, but there is also a possibility that bedbugs have got at you. If this happens in your own bed, then you have problems. If you are in a hotel, go and make a complaint to the boss.

You can be sure that most hotel managers will take complaints about bed bugs very gravely, because it is well known that the numbers of bedbugs are rising rapidly and have been since 1995. It is also common knowledge that large compensation awards have been made against hotels. Some of them were at hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Most so-called ‘bed bugs’ will only feed on humans if their favourite host, often poultry, are not available, but there is one that only sucks human blood and that species is called Cimex lectularius.

Cimex lectularius was virtually extinct in the developed world by the late 1950′s because of the extensive use of DDT in homes and hotels to kill all insects such as ants, bed bugs, silverfish, millipedes and cockroaches.

However, there has been a gigantic revival in the number of bedbugs since 1995. In fact, between 1995 and 2001, one report on bedbugs in London stated that incidents of bedbug call-outs had doubled every year.

The recovery in bedbug numbers has been ascribed to global travel and immigration from Asia and Africa. However, it is also likely that they were never completely wiped out and that they have become resistant to modern pesticides. There is not much you can put down or spray around now that will kill bedbugs.

So, what do bedbugs look like? Well, there are lots of different types of bed bugs, but most of them are brownish, unless they have just fed and then there is a red tinge to them. However, they can also be white to yellowish. Sometimes, they look banded because bedbugs are covered with short hairs which reflect light like a stripy lawn.

Bedbugs have a beak-like mouth-piece with two tubes. One tube squirts spittle into you and the other sucks blood out. The spittle contains anti-coagulant and a pain-killer, so that you do not know that you have been bitten until long after the bedbug has left.

Some people never know, because they are not allergic to the saliva, others get a lump or slight swelling almost right away, but sometimes the swelling can take a week to come out. These bites may or may not be itchy.

If you travel a lot, or if you go to parts of the world that are less involved with hygiene, you must be careful about not taking bedbugs home with you. They will not remain on your body, but they may lay eggs in your clothing or hole up in your suitcase. Therefore, either before you go home or immediately on arrival have your clothes washed at a temperature above 46c and blast your suitcase with a jet of steam or hot air.

Owen Jones, the writer of this article, writes on many topics, but is currently concerned with bed bugs extermination. If you are interested in this, please visit our website now at Picture Of Bed Bugs for more details.