Search Results for: Bed bug

Bed bugs

…s are discovered by accident. One good note: It has never been proved that bedbugs spread diseases. The female bed bug lays 4-5 eggs per day, totaling up to 200. She adheres them firmly to the ground in her hiding place. At room temperature, the eggs hatch in ten days. The small bed bugs resemble the adults. They shed their skin five times and must have a blood meal between each moult. Bed bugs can live a few months without blood, and even longer…

Bed bugs

…they can be difficult to get rid of once they have settled. Appearance The bed bug is a specific species of ticks, and they are equipped with a proboscis, which is a typical characteristic among ticks. This proboscis is normally used to suck plant sap, but the bed bug uses it to suck blood. Another characteristic for this species of ticks, is that it is not equipped with wings. The adult bed bug can become 4-5 mm long, and is recognizable by an ov…

Bed bug

…Latin: Cimex lectularius) Grown bed bug 5,5 mm Unlike most other bugs, the bed bug is wingless. When it has not recently fed its body is paper-thin, and almost red-brown. So far as is known bed bugs originated from Asia, but they have now spread to all parts of the world. They were well known in ancient times in the Mediterranean area. As they require a warm, dry climate they did not spread to northern regions until buildings started to be heated…

Bed bugs stick together

…eir excrements if you look behind the pictures and behind loose wallpaper. Bed bug excrements are black, have a characteristic shape (right) and do not look like the spots that are made by spiders. (Diehl & Weidner and Kemper) It is rare to find a lonely bed bug, when it is not just a case of an individual who has ventured forward to search for blood. They have a pronounced desire to clump together. If you have found one of their strongholds, and…

Can you recognize a bed bug bite?

…ion at all. This means that they can donate blood to a large population of bed bugs without noticing it, and maybe only discover the animals later by accident. In most people, the bed bug bites leave red itchy spots, an allergic reaction to the foreign proteins in the bed bug’s saliva. Exactly because people react so differently to insect bites, it is difficult, if not impossible, to immediately distinguish one kind of itchy rash from the other, a…

Bed bugs

…Bedbug, male Three things hurt in a peasant’s house: “Mean wife, smoke and bed bug” (Peder Syv, approx. 1680) Fig. 16. A common bed bug dreaming of the old days. (Usinger) Where in the system do bed bugs belong? Bed bugs are insects and therefore belong to the largest class of living animals. Currently, about 1 million different species of insects have been described and it is expected that there are 10 million or more, still unknown. Among other…

Where does it come from?

…nsects began about 400 million years ago. However, the direct ancestors of bed bugs, plant lice and reduviids, have only been found as fossils in approx. 300 million years old layers. The bloodsuckers didn’t have any opportunities until the warm-blooded mammals and birds came approx. 200 million years ago. But when were humans burdened with these nasty bloodsuckers? It is possible to get an idea by studying what other kind of animals are plagued b…

A bit of history

…of in the twelfth century and in France around the year 1300. In Denmark, bed bugs arrived during the seventeenth century, by travelers, perhaps pilgrims, from the south. They quickly became common, were given many common names and soon a lot of superstition was attached to the intrusive guests. One of the more strange pieces of advice for avoiding bed bugs comes from Vendsyssel in Denmark and requires keeping a human skull from a grave in the fa…

Development of adult bed bugs

…ways. Some insects undergo a complete metamorphosis. A good example is butterflies, where out of the egg comes a caterpillar that in no way resembles the adult. It must undergo a pupal stage where the complete metamorphosis to adult butterfly takes place. In others, and among them the bed bugs, the little bugs that come out of the eggs broadly resemble the adults. They undergo an incomplete metamorphosis. In case of the bed bug, it goes through fi…

How do you get bed bugs?

…size. It may seem inexplicable, when you suddenly discover that there are bed bugs in the home. Maybe it has been some time since they were introduced. The main reasons can be summarized as follows: The house has been visited by a person who brought them in his or her luggage. You have stayed somewhere, a hotel or hostel perhaps, where bed bugs have been, and they have then sought refuge in your luggage. They can climb in from a neighbor’s apartm…

Mating

…m pheromone, being released by the harassed male. Like many other insects, bed bugs can communicate by using specific pheromones. The pheromones are released from special scent glands in specific situations, and can trigger a specific behavior in similar species. Among other things, bed bugs can make use of an alarm pheromone when they are in danger. It deters the bed bugs that are nearby, causing them to spread out so they do not all become an ea…

Bed bugs in animals

…ouse may be infected by bed bugs. They are similar in appearance to common bed bugs and behave the same way. They live in the near vicinities of the host animal nests or beds and seek them out to suck blood. Bed bugs in animals rarely fly into houses and bite people. The risk is greatest if the natural host animal for some reason disappears from the house. Bat bugs, Cimex pipistrelli, live in places where the Common pipistrelle sleep. The common p…

The common flower bug

Flower bug Flower bug The common flower bug, Anthocoris nemorum, is common outdoors on shrubs and trees. It is 3-4 mm long, dark, has wings and a long thin proboscis. It sucks out plant lice, mites and other insects. It is easy to get into contact with these little predatory insects when picking fruit, or you can bring them indoors with berries or branches. The common flower bug often bites people. Perhaps they see us as giant aphids. The common…

Index

…Bacon beetles , Bark beetles Barn owl Bat bug Bathroom fly Bats droppings Bed bug faeces Bed mites Beech marten faeces scent tracks Bees Beetles Bird fleas Biscuit beetle Biting housefly Biting lice Black rat droppings Black vine-weevil Blattel/a germanica Blatta orientalis Blattodea Blowflies Body louse Bombus hypnorum Bombus lapidarius Booklice , Bostrychid beetles Bostrychider Bostrychoplites cornutus Brown dog tick Brown house moth Brown rat…

Food consumption

Bed bugs live exclusively on blood. The common bed bug prefers human blood but can suck on other animals. It is photophobic and spends most of his life hidden near places where potential blood donors spend the nighttime. If it lives under optimal conditions, hunger will drive the bed bug out of hiding approx. once a week. It happens at night, and with the help of sensory organs in its antennae, it finds its prey by going after the carbon dioxide…

Debris bug

…Debris bug (Latin: Lyctocoris campestris) This bug also comes from birds’ nests where it lives as a predator on the numerous small invertebrates, such as moth larvae, which feed on the debris that accumulates in the nests. Like the martin bug it may occasionally find its way into the house and may sometimes attack people when they are asleep….

Fly bug

…kinds. They avoid the light and spend the day hidden in crevices. Specimens found in houses are usually strays from their normal habitat, but exceptionally they may be hunting bed bugs. There have been a few records of fly bugs biting sleeping humans, and they may also bite in self defence if picked up….

Egg-laying

…w begin to lay eggs. They are laid in the hideouts, glued to the ground. A bed bug egg is approx. 1 mm long, it is whitish and almost pear-shaped. Under optimum conditions, 25-27 degrees Celsius and easy access to blood, she will lay 4-5 eggs per day for the rest of her life, which can be up to 300-400 in total. This is not such a large number compared to many other insects, but bed bug eggs sit in a relatively protected environment with good chan…

Cone bug

…( Latin: Gastrodes ferrugineus) Cone bug This is an example of an insect which has nothing to do in a house, but which may be brought indoors from time to time. It is a bug that lives in coniferous forests where it can be found under the bark of trees. In winter large numbers of these bugs live in fallen spruce cones, and if a number of these are collected for decoration it is quite easy for the bugs to find their way into the house….

Pigeon bug

…( Latin: Cimex columbarius ) Possibly only a subspecies of the common bed bug, and sometimes known as C. lectularius columbarius. It occurs in dovecots and in attics where feral pigeons roost. It is very voracious but fortunately not very common….

The debris bug

…Lyctocoris campestris, similar in size and color to the slightly elongated bed bugs. It is known in that it has wings. The German called Straight, rather than the winged bugs. Its natural habitat is the birds’ nests, where the lives of the many small animals, etc. moth larvae that thrive in the waste that accumulates in the nests. It can occasionally climb into the accommodation area and will sometimes drill its trunk in humans. The bite can be cl…

Common flower bug

Common Flower bug ( Latin: Anthocoris nemorum ) These are common bugs normally seen outdoors on trees and bushes, where they live by seizing aphids, mites and other small invertebrates, from which they suck the body fluids. They are often seen when one is picking fruit or they may be taken indoors on cut flowers. The proboscis is long and thin and the insect often bites humans. In many cases the bite is quite painful but normally there are no aft…

Martin bug

…Martin bug (Latin: Oeciacus hirundinis) This relatively small species is found in the nests of house martins and swallows, and sometimes in those of house sparrows and woodpeckers. It may occasionally be found in a house, particularly after young house martins have left the nest….

Pesticides and methods

…products. Historically, a variety of plant products have been used against bed bugs. Pepper, eucalyptus, mint, sweet gale, hemp, just to name a few. There is a widespread assumption that as long as a means derives from nature, it is harmless. In fact, some of the most dangerous poisons are “natural”, just mention drugs like nicotine and strychnine. The main plant insecticide has long been Pyrethrins, which are extracted from some tropical chrysant…

Temperature dependence

…th the available temperature. At a temperature of about 27 degrees Celsius bed bugs’ metabolism goes into overdrive and development from egg to adult can be completed in a month. At room temperature the development takes about 2 months. During cooler conditions or a shortage of food nymphs can take a season to become adults. At temperatures below 14 degrees Celsius, the development comes to a halt. Adult bed bugs are in a kind of hibernation at th…

Bed mites

…ever man lives, and that it is the dust containing them that causes the more acute attacks of asthma in sensitive patients. It is not only the mites themselves but also their cast skins and faeces which produce the symptoms, and as these are easily disturbed during dusting and bed making, people can inhale them in large numbers. Apart from sprays it has been found that the best method to get rid of these mites is frequent and thorough vacuum clean…

Index

…s scabiei Scabies Scorpiones Scutigera coleoptrata Sebocan Seven-spot lady bug Simuliidae Siphonaptera Solitary bees Spider Spiders Spilopsyllus cunicu1i Spirokæt-infektion Squirrel fleas Stable fly Stenepteryx hirundinis Stinging hairs Stinging jellyfish Stinging tentacles Stomoxys calcitrans Storage mite Storage mites Storm bug Stueflue Stylostom Sucking louse Sulphur ointment Tabanidae Tabanus bovinus Tactic veto Tarantula Tarsonemus Tarsonemus…

Bug Indentification

…When insects appear that do not correspond to the insects shown and described here, you can seek help from more experienced colleagues or from professionals in relevant museums. You can even determine the insects by literature or try to find them on the Internet. In reference books, the emphasis is usually put on showing insects as oversize drawings. These museum-like presentations are very accurate and cannot be dispensed in a book like this. Us…

Bat bug

…( Latin: Cimex pipistrelli ) This species may occur in lofts where bats roost….

How do they look?

…acks. The color is reddish brown and the body shape almost oval. The adult bed bugs are 4-5 mm long and 2-3 mm wide, which is a size you can see. It lacks the wings of a typical bug. The front pair of wings is reduced to a pair of small pads and the hind wings are completely missing. This means that the abdomen is exposed and you can clearly see its articulation. Males are consistently larger than females, and their abdomen, which carries the geni…