There are in fact quite a few types of bed bug, but the one that most people mean by 'bedbugs' is Cimex lectularius. Other species of bedbugs will extract human blood, but normally only if their favoured host, like poultry, is not around.
Bedbugs are tiny, but not too small to see. Adults are about four or five millimetres in length and one-and-a-half to three millimetres wide. They are brownish in colour, but may appear banded because they are covered in short hairs.
Having said that, they are still not easy to get a good look at, because they are very quick and only come out at night. In fact, their favourite dinner time is more of an early breakfast, because they normally dine on us an hour before dawn. If you want to see or catch some bedbugs, this is the best time too do it, because you may see them struggling to get home with full bellies to sleep it off for a few days before going out again.
So, rather than waste your time, it is probably better to look at a number of pictures of bedbugs first so that you know what you are looking for. Bedbugs are attracted by heat and CO2, so one method of trying to catch a few is putting a bar of soap in a centimetre of water and then lying on the bed. After half an hour, get the soap and whip the bed clothes back. You can dab up any bed bugs with the soap.
Then you will have plenty of time to study them under a magnifying glass. If they are not residing in your mattress, and you are sure that you have bed bugs, check behind any loose-fitting woodwork.
They love to get into dark cracks to sleep it off and skirting boards or architrave are ideal. So is damaged plaster, broken lino or ripped wall paper.
Hardly any crack is too thin for them, because they are so thin themselves, as you can observe from photos. They look as if they have been flattened. However, the nymphs or babies are very small, a bit rounder and often whitish. It takes six moultings for a nymph to become an adult and the moulted skins look just like the insect that abandoned it, but with nothing inside it - as if it had been kind of sucked out.
The bedbug's skin is in fact the key to killing it, as bedbugs have become tolerant to most everyday pesticides. Their skin, or exoskeleton, has a waxy layer on it to stop dehydration. If you can remove that wax, the insect will dry out and die.
Some modern bedbug sprays incorporate finely powdered glass or silicone which sticks to the insect and as it wriggles into crevices, the powder scrapes the wax off. Diatomaceous earth was used for the same purpose long ago, and it is making a comeback in the fight to eradicate bed bugs. It is non-toxic and environmentally friendly, so safe to deploy in your home and close to your pets.
More Information:
Owen Jones, the writer of this piece, writes on many topics, 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 more details.
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