BED BUGS.  What curious creatures.  But not so curious when they decide to make your home their home. 

Bed Bugs feed exclusively on your blood and the blood of your family members.  Once they arrive, these fierce looking creatures are determined invaders of home furnishings including mattresses, box springs, couches, chairs and carpets. They typically arrive in your home on or in your luggage as hitch hikers from places you have visited. They are picked up in not so high class hotels as well as high class hotels, resorts, college dorms, cruise ships, apartments, nursing homes, busses, trains and airplanes. They deposit their sticky eggs deep within your furniture or in cracks in your flooring where the natural adhesive on the eggs makes them resistant to vacuuming. At night, in the dark, they inject you with an anesthetic prior to sucking blood from you and often leave a straight line trail of bites. When the light hits, they scurry for cover and hide until dark. Adult bugs are about the size of a tick and are often mistaken for a tick or a small cockroach. They are prolific and multiply rapidly. Once an infestation occurs, it usually takes a professional to thoroughly rid your home of them. Most people that try to eliminate bed bugs by themselves usually end up calling a professional eventually anyway and, by that time, the infestation has become more widespread and is more difficult to eliminate. Meanwhile, the biting continues

Interesting Bed Bug Facts:

§         ∙ Adults can survive over a year without feeding

§         ∙ Not a filth pest

§         ∙ Feed exclusively on blood

§         ∙ Need to feed only once every one to two weeks

§         ∙ Adults can live 6 -12 months without a meal

§         ∙ Nymphal (babies) bed bugs can live up to 3 – 4 months without a meal.

§         ∙ 5 molts – each needs a blood meal to grow to the next stage.

§         ∙ Life Cycle takes 4-5 weeks (egg-to-egg) in 'good' conditions [ 83-90 degrees F ]

§         ∙ Seeks shelter when not feeding

§         ∙ Can survive sustained cold and heat- Cold to 39 Degrees F- Heat to 150 Degrees F.

§         ∙ Feeding time generally takes 3 – 5 minutes

§         ∙ The number one killer of bed bugs…HEAT

§         ∙ Attach small whitish eggs to surfaces in harborages where they hide in loose clusters; eggs are visible to the naked eye

§         ∙ 5 molts – each needs a blood meal to grow to the next stage

§         ∙ Life Cycle takes 4-5 weeks (egg-to-egg) in 'good' conditions [ 83-90 degrees F ]

§         ∙ Females produce 3-5 eggs per day, laying up to 500 in a lifetime. Eggs hatch in 8 – 10 days.

§         ∙ Female may lay 200-500 eggs in her lifetime

§         ∙ Feeds when the host is inactive-Nocturnal pest