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

You can be certain that most hotel bosses will take complaints about bed bugs very gravely, because it is well known that the numbers of bedbugs are increasing fast and have been since 1995. It is also common knowledge that huge 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 chickens, are not available, but there is one that only feeds on 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 residences and hotels to eradicate 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 resurgence 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 eradicated and that they have become tolerant 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 tint 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 saliva contains anti-coagulant and a pain-killer, so that you do not know that you have been bitten until long after the bedbug has gone home.

Some people never know, because they are not allergic to the saliva, others get a bump or slight swelling almost immediately, 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 concerned 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 hide in your suitcase. Therefore, either before you go home or without delay 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 at present involved with bed bugs extermination. If you are interested in this, please visit our website now at Picture Of Bed Bugs for further details.

Do you know whether you have ever come across a bed bug? You probably have not. Not yet, but the odds that you will are increasing every day. This is because bed bugs are undergoing an explosion in their numbers and mankind is quite helpless to stop them at the moment, although a lot of people are working on it.

You see, the problem is that bed bugs are pretty much tolerant to every insecticide that we have. They were almost wiped out in the West in the Forties and Fifties with the extensive use of DDT, but the ones that survived and the ones that have been brought into the country are resistant to pesticides.

Scientists are working on insecticides that will be effective against bed bugs, but there is no light at the end of the tunnel so far.

So, we are stuck with a burgeoning population of bed bugs. How do you get bed bugs? Usually, you just pick them up and take them home or someone does it for you. It is thought that foreign travel and immigration are largely responsible for the first members of our new bed bug community.

These days, you can pick them up anyplace where people go: taxis, movie theaters, bars, hotels, motels, cars, buses and planes. Even in the doctor’s surgery.

It used to be believed that bed bugs only flourished in poor peoples’ houses, but this is incorrect. In fact, the rich are more likely to get them than the poor, because they travel more often. You can also be given bedbugs in secondhand furniture, clothing and suitcases.

Bedbugs like to creep into in cracks, so you could be sitting on a bus and one will clamber up the back of your coat and nuzzle under your collar. There it might lay a few eggs and walk off or it might go to sleep. When you get home, you will put your coat in the wardrobe and a few days later you will have your very own family of hungry little bedbugs. It is that easy.

Some bedbugs will also live on birds and bats. These bedbugs would rather bird blood, but if there are not many around, you may find them dropping from the ceiling onto you, if you have birds or bats in your loft. Bats are protected now, so you will have to have them removed, but you ought to discourage birds from nesting above you.

The bedbugs will be attracted to the CO2 on your breath and your body heat and then they use pheromones to tell the others where you are. It usually only takes a bedbug five minutes to feed and then it goes back home to sleep it off for three to five days.

A mature bedbug has gone through six moultings and after a mature female has been inseminated, she can lay between 300 and 1,000 eggs in her lifetime of about six to twelve months. She will lay several eggs a day and they will hatch out in around ten days. So, you only need one pregnant female and you are in trouble very soon.

If you have a couple of dozen females laying eggs in your mattress, it will take less than a fortnight before dozens of baby bedbugs (called nymphs) are hatching out every day and then one of their relatives will lead them straight to you.

Owen Jones, the author of this article, writes on many subjects, but is at present concerned with how do you get bed bugs? If you are interested in this, please visit our website now at Picture Of Bed Bugs for further details.

Bed bugs are a growing source of aggravation, especially in the developed Western world, because bedbugs were largely wiped out there by the late 1950’s. This means that most people under 50 years of age had probably never seen a bedbug until after 1995, when they made a big return. Their numbers are still increasing quickly, so a lot people are turning to thinking about killing bed bugs.

This is due to two major factors: their natural resilience and their resistance to contemporary household chemical pesticides. Their natural toughness is due to a waxy coating on their bodies which protects them from surfactant pesticides to a great extent and their resistance to chemical pesticides is most likely due to the fact that they were exterminated in the West in the 1940’s and 1950’s by the extensive use of DDT.

The waxy coating of bedbugs blocks their rapid dehydration, which is why they can lie inactive for up to five months waiting for a fitting host to come along. It is also the reason why a lot of contact pesticides are unsuccessful. Therefore, one of the techniques for killing bed bugs is getting rid of that waxy coating.

People knew this 150 years ago, but they did not have the technology to actually take advantage of the information. People often used to put down crushed dried leaves or sharp sand. In the 19th century, lime, ash and diatomaceous earth were used to erode the outer waxy coating. The latter was particularly effective and has seen an increase in usage over the last few years as an option to chemicals.

One method of killing bed bugs that will not work is catching them and crushing them, even if you did wrap sticky insect bands around the legs of your bed. Bed bugs cannot fly, but they would still get at you. They are not averse to traipsing up to the ceiling and dropping on to you.

If you want to try chemical insecticides, then there are three basic types. The first sort attempts to mimic the effects of diatomaceous earth. It is a spray that includes pulverized glass or silica mixed with a contact pesticide. This does not sound a healthy environment for humans or pets either though. Breathing powdered glass or silica seems like bad news.

Contact insecticides have limited effect, to a degree due to the waxy layer, but also because to be effective they have to be strong and this makes them a repellent, which means that the bedbugs will just avoid it if they can.

Insect growth regulators are useful for killing the young, which is fantastic, but the adults can live for about a year, so that is not so good, unless you are thinking about a long world cruise.

Professionals frequently use steam these days, because none of the bed bug’s life stages can survive temperatures above 45c, so you could try this method by hiring a steam wall paper stripper or a hot air paint stripper for the weekend and going over your walls and woodwork. In fact, if all your wall paper and paint is going to fall off, you may as well combine the session with your next redecoration.

Owen Jones, the writer of this piece, writes on many subjects, but is currently concerned with bed bugs extermination. If you are interested in this, please go over to our website now at Picture Of Bed Bugs for further details.