How to get rid of bedbugs before they evict you

Even if your home is clean, it doesn’t mean that one day you won’t have to google: “How to get rid of bedbugs at home.” Anyone can become their victim. These pests don't care how many times a day you clean. First, let's figure out what this insect looks like and in what conditions it lives.

The bedbug is dark yellow or brown in color and measures about 0.5 cm in size. The flattened shape of the body makes the bedbug surprisingly tenacious. This is a nocturnal insect that attacks during sleep, when the victim is as relaxed and defenseless as possible.

Signs of house bugs

All bedbugs are similar to each other. If you have seen red soldiers on a tree in the park, then you know their main characteristics. They have a flat body, hard wings, a back, short legs and a head separated from the body with a sucking organ. In addition to red parasites, you may also be aware of small green ones that live in raspberries and other berries, and large gray-brown potato pests.

Domestic bed bugs differ from all others in their small size, lack of patterns on the back; adults are brown, newborns are transparent or pale yellow, thin and soft. At different stages of development, they can resemble all insects at once: cockroaches, lice, ticks, ants, fleas.

External data and characteristics of the parasite

The linen bug differs from midges and other species of its own kind by its inability to fly. Born to crawl and suck the blood of living things, it has a clearly segmented abdomen. If you look closely, it seems as if his entire miniature body is tied with shiny belts and divided into striped segments.

• Head. Has the shape of a triangle. Below there is a long proboscis, which is essentially jaws fused together. True, all this can be seen only under a microscope. The proboscis is sharp enough to pierce human skin. But it cannot pierce the skin of cattle or dogs of large and medium breeds.
• Length. The body length of a hungry insect does not exceed 3 mm. However, as it becomes saturated, the body stretches and lengthens. After gorging themselves, bed bugs reach more impressive sizes - up to 8 mm.
• Form. When hungry, bed bugs look like a flattened cake. But the insect, which has managed to feed on the blood of its victim, noticeably rounds, stretches, turning into a tiny barrel.
• Color. The shell is brown or red-brown with a brown tint. And here, too, everything depends on the satiety of the creature. A hungry bug is lighter than its well-fed counterparts, but after a meal it also takes on a deep dark shade.

The parasite's proboscis has two separate valves. One is designed to absorb blood, and the second is to introduce an analgesic, a substance that relieves pain, into a hole made in the skin, allowing the insect to strike the victim as unnoticed as possible.

Features of life

The life cycle of a bed bug is quite monotonous and lasts on average 12 months. Particularly tenacious representatives of the species live for a year and three months.

• Pairing. A female may have only one mating process in her life. The male “transplants” his seed into the chosen one in a traumatic way. In fact, he pierces her abdomen with his genitals to share genetic material. The female periodically lays eggs if she considers the surrounding conditions favorable for “children.” On average, she lays up to five hundred eggs during her life.
• Transformation of an egg into a nymph. After a week or two, the egg turns into a nymph, that is, into a larva. The next transformation will occur only when the nymph drinks a full portion of human blood. Compare: the female drinks 7 ml of “food” in one sitting, and the nymph drinks no more than 0.3 mg.
• Incubation period. Depending on conditions, the transformation of an egg into a mature individual takes from a month to 100 days.
• Period of suspended animation. Bed bugs feed on human blood. Sometimes - the blood of bats and domestic animals (those whose skin can be bitten through). If an insect remains hungry for a long time, it goes into hibernation - suspended animation. Bed bugs can live without food for up to a year. But as soon as food begins to loom on the horizon, they immediately awaken from sleep and begin to act instantly.

At a temperature of 50 °C, bed bugs die. And instantly. These creatures are more resistant to frost than to heat. For an egg to die, the air temperature in its habitat must remain at –30 °C for at least two to three days.

Differences from other insects

Due to ignorance, the bedbug can easily be confused with other insects. For example, with ants, which nymphs (parasite larvae) look like, or with fleas. Four main differences will help you get to the bottom of the truth.

1. Lack of wings. If an insect has wings, it is most likely a cockroach. Or, alternatively, any other insect that has entered the house from the street.
2. Inability to jump. A miniature bug that dashingly jumps from object to object is a flea. A real laundry parasite can neither jump nor fly. In his arsenal of talents there is only prosaic crawling.
3. No constrictions in the abdominal area. If the insect you find has such a constriction, then it is an ant.
4. The presence of six legs. Flat, round, small bugs with eight legs are mites. They are extremely dangerous, but they do not settle in human habitation and do not form nests in sofas.

Bedbugs are often confused with cockroach larvae. However, the latter have a characteristic difference - a double tail (a bifurcation in the lower part of the abdomen). Biting parasites have nothing like this.

What to do if you find a bedbug?

If you manage to catch a parasite in bed, your first impulse is to crush it. This may be difficult. It is quite difficult to crush an adult hungry bug that has not drunk blood with your fingers - it is very flat, hard, and slips out of your hands. A hungry small insect is unlikely to be caught due to its agility and size.

The easiest way is to crush a large, well-fed pest, fat and slow with blood. But is it possible to do this and will there be blood if you crush a bug? Since it is full of what it feeds on, you may end up with difficult-to-remove stains of blood and dark bug-like lymph on your bed after you destroy it. Particularly large parasites are crushed with an unpleasant crash, so that blood can splatter the wall, so it is better not to do this right in bed.

When do you need to look for and eliminate ways for bedbugs to enter your apartment - before or after treatment?

It is best to look for such places where bedbugs enter the apartment before treatment.

Firstly, before treatment, it is easier to see where the bedbugs are coming from - where there are most of them, that’s where they most often come from.

Secondly, if the places of their penetration are blocked after treatment, there is a risk that some isolated individuals will climb into the room during this period of time from treatment to the isolation of these very places. If a product without a strong residual effect was used for the treatment, these isolated bedbugs may survive.

Do bedbugs have a smell?

This is a specific question that depends on the type of insect, the subtlety of a person’s sense of smell and his special makeup. Wild bugs that live in the forest, in the garden and in nature have a strong odor and stink when you crush them. Whether bed bugs smell is another matter. Experts say that a strong, rich smell can only be felt if there are a lot of parasites and they have been multiplying for a long time. Stagnant waste products, larvae, dead bodies - all this forms a layer inside your bed and can emit an unpleasant odor, reminiscent of many things at once. These are raspberries, cilantro, parsley, wood, excrement, cognac, peanuts - there are many associations. It is impossible to derive the formula for the true smell - it completely depends on the type of insect, its habitat and the number of individuals in one place.

Do not rush to draw conclusions about the presence of blood-sucking parasites in the house if you notice a strong smell. It may come from one or two forest insects that came to you through a window or were brought on your clothes. Bugs that live in the forest stink on their own, and when you crush them, the smell becomes very bright and disappears when the source is eliminated. Whereas bed pests individually do not smell at all and it is impossible to detect them in this way: the only indicators are regular small bites on the skin and particles of the epidermis, feces and larvae that can be found in the bed.

Traces on pastels

Colorful bed linen is not helpful in this case. For the experiment, it is better to take a light set. The mosquito injects a substance that clots the blood, but bedbugs do not have such a remedy in their arsenal, so the wound bleeds for some time.

Brown spots on the bed are imprints of blood leaking from the wound after feeding. Those who sleep in a nightgown or pajamas will see such marks on their sleepwear.

The parasite has a flat body, so it is difficult to accidentally crush it. But when eating, the abdomen swells and invulnerability is lost. At this moment, you can crush the bloodsucker. Traces from bedbugs look larger than a drop of blood from a wound.

Another test that can be done using a white sheet. We set the alarm for 3 am and go to bed. A sharply turned-on light will prevent parasites from quickly spreading. Once you see insects, there will be no more doubts.

What to do if there are a lot of bedbugs?

Is it easy to squash one bedbug? Certainly. If you find a lot of parasites on your bed at once, squashing them all is not a good idea. This will ruin the bed linen and probably your mood.

In this case, you need to quickly wrap the sheet with the parasites in a ball before they scatter, and put it in the washing machine. Set the temperature and speed to high and wash the clothes. This will kill the insects without bleeding, get rid of the unpleasant smell and appearance, and help preserve the sheet. In addition to such destruction, it will be necessary to carry out a complete disinfection, because there are likely to be many other parasites and larvae in the bed walls and in the mattress. Therefore, if you don’t want to fight pests every night or suffer from their bites, call a specialist, or use products to clean your home yourself. They will also help get rid of other insects that you might not have noticed.

What to remember:

1. It is not advisable to crush bedbugs, because... They are difficult to catch and can stain the bed and walls of the room.
2. It is better to crush a large, well-fed individual, it is slower. If you decide to crush a bedbug, take precautions first.
3. Bedbugs reproduce quickly, so if you see one individual, you can be sure that there are many more of them. A comprehensive treatment of the apartment and belongings will be required.

See you in the next article!

Danger of bites

Researchers are still debating why bed bugs are dangerous to humans. So far, it has not been possible to scientifically prove the fact that bedbugs transmit infections. However, assumptions regarding the fact that arthropods can infect humans with smallpox, hepatitis B, tularemia, and anthrax still exist. Linen parasites cause the greatest harm to humans through their bites. One bug can leave a chain of up to seven bites in a row on an adult or child. By the way, parasites prefer children to adults. Babies have more delicate skin that is easier to bite through.

The table lists the main dangers that bedbug bites entail and how to combat them. But before taking any medications, consult your doctor. And immediately after detecting damage to the skin, treat the bite site with an antibacterial agent (spray, liquid or ointment), and apply cold.

Table - Why bedbug bites are dangerous

Despite the unproven hypothesis that bedbugs are carriers of diseases, it is better not to touch the bite site with dirty hands, and it is advisable to treat the wound yourself - even before consulting your family doctor.

Stress as a consequence

Among all the consequences of bedbug bites, the most serious and difficult to treat is stress. The reasons for its development may be as follows.

Traces of life activity

Every living organism leaves traces of its vital activity. Bed bug feces appear everywhere and are different from regular trash.

• Any food is digested and not all is absorbed. Therefore, the process of defecation, which is natural for living beings, is also characteristic of parasites.
• Initially, the excrement is liquid and brown in color, but it quickly hardens and turns into black balls.
• The process often occurs after eating, so marks appear directly on the bed and near the sleeping area.

Another sign is the presence of shed skin. The nymph goes through several stages of molting as it grows. The husk from this process remains mostly in the nest, but it can be found anywhere.