The life cycle of the pest lasts up to one year. In the event of a lack of food or at low temperatures, bloodsuckers fall into suspended animation (slowing down the life process in order to survive unfavorable conditions) or move to places that are more favorable for them. Bedbugs are not able to survive temperatures that are too low from -15 degrees and too high from +30 degrees and die.
What harm do bedbugs cause to humans?
Scientists have still not been able to identify the fact that bedbugs have infected humans with any disease, although this is theoretically possible. The main harm from bedbug bites is that they often cause an allergic reaction, which can result in fatal angioedema. The rash that appears after bites is very itchy; if you scratch it, you can introduce bacteria into the wounds and thereby provoke the occurrence of an inflammatory process and suppuration.
Also significant harm is the psychological oppression of a person, he cannot fully rest, becomes irritable, and his mood deteriorates. The very thought that harmful creatures crawl over the bodies of adults and children at night and suck out blood can deprive them of peace and sleep. And when there are so many bedbugs that it turns into a real invasion and they can bite without even waiting for the person to fall asleep, you just want to leave the room.
Where do bed bugs come from?
There are several ways and reasons for the appearance of bed bugs in human housing:
Methods for controlling bed bugs
Folk remedies for bedbugs
Advice! Of all the listed plants, only chamomile is completely harmless to people and pets; the rest are poisonous to varying degrees. Therefore, it is important to ventilate the room to avoid high concentrations of harmful substances in the air. When using turpentine, vinegar, kerosene, denatured alcohol, etc. you need to leave the room completely until they are completely weathered.
How to fight bed bugs using chemicals
Before you take on insecticides, you need to prepare and take precautions:
- carefully study the instructions and act according to them;
- wear personal protective equipment;
- remove all people and pets from the premises;
- remove food, toys, clothes, you can take them out to the balcony;
- liquid products are sprayed using a spray bottle;
- careful treatment of all seams, folds, bottom and back parts of furniture, baseboards, cracks in the floor and walls, carpets, paintings and other hard-to-reach places is required;
- After treatment, leave the room closed for several hours;
- some drugs do not immediately affect bedbugs, so you should not start cleaning immediately after treatment; you should spend at least one day outside the house;
- After waiting time, you need to rinse everything well and vacuum it upholstered furniture, mattress, blankets, pillows, carpets, cracks, after which the dust bag must be thrown away, blankets and pillows can also be dry cleaned, clothes can be washed at high temperature and stroke;
- After treatments, you need to regularly inspect secluded places in order to notice surviving bedbugs in time and destroy them; the sooner the bloodsuckers are detected, the easier it will be to fight them.
Important! Since bedbug eggs are not sensitive to most drugs, re-treatment is necessary after 10-14 days. During this time, a new generation of pests will hatch.
What are the types of chemicals?
The range of insecticides is presented in the form of powders, liquids and aerosols. You need to choose the remedy that is most suitable in a given situation and apply it correctly. If these conditions are not met, the problem may worsen - the bedbugs will spread throughout the home or get used to the chemical and lose sensitivity to it.
- Aerosols. The advantages of such tools are: ease of use, efficiency, penetration into hard to reach places. The disadvantages include: they apply even to items that were not intended to be treated, they can cause allergies, an insufficient dosage will not kill bedbugs, but will only disperse them throughout the room, which will make further fight against them much more difficult. The most famous aerosols: Dichlorvos, Raptor, Raid, Combat, Carbozol.
- Liquids: Forside, Foxid, Lacterin, Actellik. Often, such products must be diluted with water, then the resulting mixture must be sprayed on the home, paying the greatest attention to places where insects accumulate. Substances that fall on the body of one bug are carried into the nest and there affect the entire family. Advantages of liquid products: less toxic to people and animals, have a long-lasting effect (up to several months).
- Powders: Neopin, Karbofos, Riapan, Clean House. Can be used in unchanged form or as a suspension. IN powder form the drug is poured into the areas where pests are located. The room is sprayed with the suspension. The powder must be used very carefully; if it gets into the lungs, serious complications and illnesses can occur, for example, pneumonia.
After killing bedbugs, you need to apply preventive measures, aimed at preventing the re-entry of insects into the house, inspect things, especially those brought from travel, seal the cracks as much as possible so that bedbugs have less chance of moving into the apartment from neighbors.
Everyone is familiar with what bedbugs look like in general from the example of the soldier bugs that swarm in every park in the spring. Their characteristic appearance as a whole is common to all bedbugs: an elongated body, dense wings with an intricate pattern, a head well demarcated from the body with a pointed “nose”. Pest bugs have a similar appearance Agriculture, predatory tropical bugs and even water strider bugs that live in ponds and rivers.
By the way, well-fed bedbugs become more vulnerable and often die in bed, crushed by their own victims. A hungry, “flat” bug is difficult not only to pick up with your fingers, but even to crush - it can press so tightly against a flat surface. To destroy one insect, you need to use a hard object - a coin, a knife, a nail.
Each bug has a small elongated proboscis on its head - a feeding organ made up of upper and lower jaws elongated in the process of evolution. This proboscis contains two channels: one for sucking blood, the other for introducing saliva into the wound. With this proboscis, the bug pierces the skin in the place closest to the capillary and sucks blood for a minute or two. He then moves a few centimeters and repeats this procedure. After 4-5 bites, the insect is satisfied and crawls into the shelter to digest the food.
The body size of a bed bug ranges from 0.5 to 8 mm. Adults usually have a body length of about 4 mm in a hungry state; after feeding, their body sometimes doubles in size. Larvae of the youngest age may be invisible to the naked eye. And in general, young bedbugs are much easier to miss or confuse with other insects.
On a note
The need for bedbugs to periodically move from their shelters in the apartment to their feeding place (on a person’s bed) can be used to destroy these bloodsuckers. To do this, you just need to make some kind of barriers from an insecticidal preparation around each leg of the bed. The photo below shows an example:
When implementing this method of fighting bedbugs, you must first destroy all the bedbugs in the bed itself.
What do bed bug larvae and eggs look like?
Each egg is elongated and looks like an ant's egg.
Immediately after hatching from the eggs, bedbug larvae look like newborn cockroaches or lice. They are transparent and light, and only over time, after several feedings and molts, they begin to darken and acquire the body color characteristic of adult insects. At this stage, they are already quite easily distinguished from other insects.
However, you can understand that in a house, country house or hotel even before a sleepless, painful night. Even before settlement, you can easily detect them and take appropriate measures.
How can you tell if there are bedbugs in your house?
First and most reliable way detect presence - see them. It's not that difficult, especially knowing what a bedbug looks like. In most cases, insects hide during daylight hours under mattresses on beds, in folds of furniture and clothing, in corners under carpets and floor coverings. In a room infested with bedbugs, it is enough to inspect only the most obvious places of their possible presence in order to find several individuals. This will be enough to confirm their presence.
What most often and easily catches the eye is not the bugs themselves, but the chitinous shells remaining after their moults. Entire deposits of insects can accumulate under the dens of insects if the room has not been cleaned for a long time. These same dry skins are often found in the trash and in the corners of the room.
Bedbugs themselves have a rather characteristic smell. In a heavily infested room, even a person can smell a slightly sweet smell of almonds or fermented raspberries. In the USA, sanitary services even train dogs to search for bedbugs: for them, finding these insects is much easier than finding drugs at customs.
At the same time, one should not assume that bedbugs settle mainly in unsanitary conditions: these insects easily master and take root both in rural barns for animals and in fashionable city apartments on any floors. It is very important that they migrate quite easily between apartments in apartment buildings, and therefore if neighbors have problems with bedbugs, then the residents of a particular apartment most likely cannot avoid these problems.
There are about 40,000 in the suborder of hemiptera insects. Red, green, brown, black bugs, with bright splashes and patterns on the shell, predators or herbivores, harmless and deadly - they are all related to each other. You can meet insects everywhere: in the forest, garden, park, vegetable garden, own apartment. The presented photos of bedbugs will help in the smallest details consider the characteristics of each type.
What do house bugs look like?
In one meal, house bugs drink an amount of blood that is twice their own weight.
It is not typical for the stink bug species to attack humans. For the most part, they feed on plant juices, and in rare cases, the remains of dead insects.
About 70 species of shield insects are found in Europe.
“Harmless” bug soldier
Appearance distinguishes them from the entire bedbug family, thanks to the red and black ornament on the shell. The body size does not exceed 9-10 mm. The insect is thermophilic and lives throughout Eurasia with a temperate climate. Soldier bugs lead a colonial lifestyle; colonies can most often be found near fallen trees and stumps. With the onset of winter, they hibernate and spend this time in dry crevices of trees, street fences, or in outbuildings. In spring, at a temperature of + 10 °, they leave their shelters.
They feed on plant sap, fallen seeds, and dead insects. Insects pierce the stems or leaves of plants and drink the juices from them. After a bedbug invasion, young plants die, stop bearing fruit, and flower buds fall off. The consequences of the attacks are clearly visible in the photo. Damaged berries, fruits, and vegetables become unfit for consumption.
The harm of soldier bugs to humans is the destruction of agricultural crops and grape plantations.
Mating occurs in an unconventional way. For insemination, adults are united by the rear parts of the body. After fertilization, the female lays pearl-colored eggs in plant tissue, approximately 20-30 eggs. After 10-15 days, larvae emerge from them. See the photo for the appearance of bedbug larvae. They differ from adult individuals in their miniature size and bright red color without black ornamentation.
Forest dweller - forest bug
The green stink bug has other names: garden bug, grass bug. The forest shield bug is sometimes mistaken for a tick. Their differences: a pentagonal-shaped shell, under which the wings are hidden. Most often they live in forests, sometimes found in city parks. They overwinter under fallen leaves or in tree trunks. Eating forest bugs sap of plants, which they pierce with a long proboscis.
The bug can be recognized by its bright original color, the color of which varies from bright green to brown with complex patterns. The forest bug, like all types of stink bugs, produces a specific odor at the moment of danger. Scent glands are also used to attract individuals of the opposite sex.
Forest Forest shield insects breed directly in feeding areas. Unusual view Look at the photo for bedbug eggs. Forest shieldbirds are characterized by caring for their offspring:
- the female brings food to small larvae;
- Without suitable places For oviposition, the female lays eggs on the male's back.
Insects do not tend to bite people; their only harm is damage to plants. Fires and drought can force them to leave their natural environment and move to agricultural land.
The wood bug is a harmless guest of city apartments
The representative of shield insects prefers to settle in trees and berry fields. He ends up in city apartments by accident. Penetration into the premises may be due to an increase in population or unfavorable weather conditions. In most cases, the bug makes independent attempts to get free. Tree stink bug in an apartment it is not capable of causing harm, it does not attack people.
Woody What color the bugs are depends on the time of year. Insects change color from bright green in April to brown shades in October. The arboreal stink bug is not a predator; its main diet is living vegetation.
The turtle bug is a pest of cereal crops
The body is small, only 1-1.3 cm. The main source of nutrition is grain crops, which corresponds to the color of the insect: yellowish, whitish, light brown, sometimes gray. Insects hibernate in forests, in early spring They begin to search for food - winter crops. Pests fly well and are able to cover a distance of 200 km in search of a food supply.
Turtle As soon as the “turtles” find a food source, they begin to reproduce. 1-2 weeks after settlement, the female begins to lay eggs that are spherical in shape and green in color. A week later, larvae appear, which, like all of the bedbug family, go through 5 stages before becoming an adult. A sharp increase in the number of insects can destroy the field completely. The view of the eaten field and the photo look depressing. How to deal with them depends on the type, variety of crop, and the degree of its maturation.
Smooth water bug
The water bug has unique abilities - it feels comfortable in both the water and air elements, displaying excellent qualities as a flyer. The smooth bug lives up to its name - an absolutely smooth body light color, similar to a boat. The size of bedbugs does not exceed 15 mm.
Water Insects are predators, feed on small arthropods and other types of insects, and are capable of attacking fish fry. They live in freshwater bodies of water and hunt with their bellies upside down. The eggs are securely hidden on the underwater parts of plants or the bottom of a reservoir. The larva hatches from the egg and molts 4 times as it matures. A shed shell is often mistaken for a living specimen. The predatory insect does not hunt a person; it is capable of biting only when it is picked up. In southern latitudes there are fish whose sizes reach 10 cm; they hunt large fish, which is why they have earned the reputation of fish killers.
Bug predator
- a numerous genus, with a total of about 7,000 species. About 90 species live on the territory of the CIS countries, the rest are common in European countries, North America, Africa. Small bugs are rare, mostly large-sized predators. The color of the coat is very varied. In temperate latitudes, brown, brown, black, in the tropics bright red, green, yellow colors.
Predators Domestic predators are found in forests, fields, between stones, in rodent burrows, and occasionally enter residential buildings. The peak of activity occurs at night, when they go hunting. They feed on insects or the blood of small mammals. Tropical individuals are not averse to feasting on human blood.
Numbering 40 thousand species. Most of them have nothing to do with humans. Some species harm agricultural crops, but there are even beneficial ones: they eat caterpillars and aphids. From early spring to late autumn, representatives of this suborder of insects from the order Hemiptera bask in the sun, pleasing our eyes with colorful “outfits”. Everyone knows, for example, what a soldier bug looks like. But there is one species that everyone remembers contact with as a nightmare.
Getting to know the bedbug
In most cases, a person does not immediately realize that he has communicated with this insect. He doesn’t know what a bug looks like, but he feels traces of its presence “in his own skin.” If you wake up for several days in a row and find bite marks on your skin, you should think about it. It could be a bug.
At the beginning of the last century, bedbugs were not a novelty. After they began to be poisoned with pesticides and other poisons, they almost disappeared. But not all. Probably, the surviving representatives have adapted to the first generation of pesticides and no longer react to them. Now bedbugs have begun to appear everywhere again. And not only in poor areas, but also in modern new buildings.
Appearance
What do bed bugs (photo) look like, whether they are house or bed or linen bugs?
These are different names for the same insect. It has a body flattened at the top and bottom without wings. The body of a bedbug does not contain water. The length depends on the amount of blood drunk. It is said about him: “The well-fed are not a friend to the hungry.” Having eaten, the bug increases not only in width, but also in length. A hungry person reaches only 3 mm, a well-fed one - 8 mm. By the way a bedbug looks, you can judge how long ago it has been eating. Its color depends on this. It ranges from dirty yellow (hungry), scarlet (just eaten) to dark brown (has been eating for a long time). The contours of the body also depend on the amount of food eaten: a hungry person is oval, a well-fed person is round.
Let's take a closer look at what bedbugs look like (photo). Pet vampires have a body covered with hairs that can only be seen under a microscope. Females are larger than males. The bug has a proboscis with which it pierces the skin. There are two canals in the small jaws. One is for introducing poisonous saliva with an analgesic, the other is for sucking blood.
What does a well-fed bedbug look like? It is very different from being hungry. Well-fed - slow, round in appearance. Hungry - flat and nimble: in search of food, it can climb onto the ceiling and glide down on the victim, like an autumn leaf.
The bug's body consists of segments, which helps it stretch when eating and avoid mechanical damage. It is almost impossible to crush a hungry bug. And when you’re full, it’s very easy, even with gentle pressure.
Stages of development
A bug goes through several stages during its life:
- egg;
- larva;
- adult (imago).
The female lays 5-12 eggs daily (there can be up to 500 eggs in total during her life). Attaches to the surface using a special secret. The egg is milky white, shaped like a grain of rice, but much smaller - up to 1 mm. Not afraid of cold and poison. Therefore, when processing the apartment, the eggs remain undamaged.
What they look like They look similar to an adult bedbug, but smaller in size and much lighter. That's why they are called nymphs.
The larva emerges from the egg within a week. She immediately begins to move and is ready to drink blood. At first the nymph is transparent, so you can see the blood she drinks through her skin. The larva molts (sheds its shell) five times, each time first drinking blood. After molting it increases in size. After 6 weeks the larva turns into an adult. If development conditions are unfavorable, the process is delayed up to 4 months.
The bug lives actively for a year and a half. But if the room temperature drops below 18 ⁰C, it can hibernate (anabiosis) and starve for another year and a half. What does a bed bug look like in a state of suspended animation? It will become thin and transparent, almost dry, seemingly dead. But this impression is deceptive. After the temperature rises, the bug comes to life, finds food and continues its life cycle. They do not tolerate frosts below -15 ⁰С and heat from 49 ⁰С.
Where do bedbugs live?
Where they are difficult to find and neutralize: inside furniture, under baseboards. This implies the answer to the question: “What does it look like? This is another name for homemade.
They also hide in books and electronics. In old things, cracks in walls and floors. In animal cells. They live in dirty and clean rooms.
In the habitats of ticks there are adults, larvae, their skins, eggs and excrement.
Therefore, if you don’t know what house bugs look like, you need to carefully examine the secluded places in the bedroom and look for these clusters.
Ways to enter the house
- Through cracks in the walls, ventilation hatches. An adult bug travels 1 m 25 cm in a minute, a larva - up to 25 cm. It can travel up to 30 m in search of food.
- With old furniture.
- With any interior items, if they were in a room infested with bedbugs.
- In the clothes of family members or guests.
- Clinging to a pet.
Often the apartment owner does not know what house bugs look like, does not notice their bites, and therefore does not fight them. In this case, their numbers quickly increase. Through cracks, bedbugs penetrate into neighboring apartments. The owners, having discovered unexpected guests, try to destroy them. But they come again and again, and their flow does not dry up.
How and when do bedbugs bite?
An anesthetic substance is released through a channel in the jaw. The person does not feel the bite and does not react to it. The bug begins to suck blood. One session of eating by a nymph lasts 3 minutes, adult- 8-10 minutes. Having eaten, the bug crawls back to its habitat and digests the food. After 15 minutes, the bite site begins to itch. But the insect is no longer nearby. You might not notice that there was a laundry bug. What does the bed look like in the morning? Drops of blood remain on it from crushed bedbugs that did not have time to escape. The spots darken by morning. During the day, the “bloodsuckers” are not visible. At night (from 3 o'clock in the morning) bedbugs go out hunting. The proboscis pierces the skin and soft fabrics until a capillary is found.
Nymphs do not know how to inject an analgesic, so the injection is heard immediately. But their proboscis is very thin, and the bite may not be noticeable.
If there are a lot of bedbugs and they are hungry, they can attack under electric light and even during the day. There is an opinion that they bite more people with delicate skin and do not like the smell of tobacco.
What do bed bug bites look like?
After the bite of one individual, a trail of several punctures is left, located one from the other at a distance of up to 4 cm. From each hole, the insect drinks several drops of blood. If bedbugs are just settling in, there may be several bites, which will make it difficult to make a diagnosis. But usually there are several dozen tracks.
Each of the bites is similar to a mosquito, but with a clear limiting line. The area near the penetration site quickly swells and turns red, and severe burning and itching begins.
The distance between bites can be several millimeters. Then they merge into a continuous swollen and itchy spot. What does a bug bite look like? The photo below shows: in its place, red lumps with liquid form.
Bedbugs bite areas of the skin not covered by clothing: arms, legs, neck, bare back. They cannot bite through fabric like a mosquito. A open areas there will always be. After all, the bug works silently. You won’t even hear a squeak from him, like a mosquito.
After a few hours, the swelling goes away and the bites stop itching. By evening, barely noticeable dots usually remain. But if you scratch, which is very likely, the blisters may remain for several weeks.
Damage caused by bites
- Pain and itching prevent you from sleeping peacefully at night and from working during the day.
- Allergic reactions occur with increased sensitivity. The temperature may rise, Quincke's edema may occur, and sometimes anaphylactic shock.
- When wounds get infected, there is a high probability of ulcers occurring.
- If a small child is bitten by bedbugs for a long time, he may develop anemia.
- These insects carry pathogens of typhoid, smallpox, tularemia, hepatitis, and tuberculosis. Some scientists are confident that bedbugs can infect humans with them. But this has not been proven by science.
How to find out that there are bedbugs in the apartment
To understand who is biting you, you need to find him. About 70% of people, mostly men, do not react to bedbugs. They are not affected by the substance administered by insects. But bugs bite everyone. If you find small dark spots of blood on your bed in the morning, you need to be wary. It could very well be bedbugs. To check, at night you should turn on the light suddenly and carefully examine yourself, the sheets, and the walls near the bed.
Appeared from nowhere Strong smell almonds or raspberries may also indicate the presence of bedbugs.
Differences from other insects
Bedbugs are often confused with cockroaches, lice, and ants. After all, most of them, fortunately, are almost never found.
Main differences:
- Bedbugs don't have nests, ants do;
- cockroaches have wings, bedbugs do not (more precisely, they do, but are underdeveloped);
- bedbugs bite the open part of the body, lice bite the closed part;
- other insects have no smell.
How to distinguish bedbug bites
Even doctors cannot always do this. But there are still a number of differences.
- Mosquito bites are not that painful. Traces from bedbugs are redder, placed in paths and groups.
- During a bite, a tick sits in the wound for a long time, burying its head in it and filling with blood; the bug runs away.
- Bee and wasp stings are more painful.
- Bedbugs bite at night and indoors.
- If you have an allergy, there is no trace of the proboscis left on the red spot.
And how to get rid of it. First, let's talk about where bedbugs can come from in an apartment. So, first of all, it is worth noting that No one is safe from the appearance of bedbugs in an apartment..
And it doesn’t matter how clean your place is or how often you take out the trash. The main thing for these unpleasant bloodsuckers is the availability of food and warmth. Therefore, an apartment of antisocial elements and a fashionable hotel can become a refuge for them equally successfully. Moreover, in places with large crowds of people and a large number of premises, it is much more difficult to cope with bedbugs, since they can migrate.
For quite a long time there was a belief that bedbugs in the house are caused by dirt, but this is not true. Any entomologist will tell you that insects cannot materialize into a home, which is called “out of thin air.” This means there are ways for them to penetrate into housing. Let's talk about them.
Sometimes, when purchasing a home, you may not notice the presence of bedbugs in it, since they have the ability to fall into suspended animation and become active when food sources appear.
Varieties of house bugs are called or. The bloodsuckers that live in private houses and apartments are not particularly different from each other. They have a flat round body and look like a button. Dimensions of a domestic bug from 4 to 8 mm. The flat shape protects against crushing.
Nests should be looked for:
- in the cracks behind the baseboards;
- behind the wallpaper, especially in places where it has peeled off;
- in the folds of curtains;
- in bedside tables and on shelves between books;
- under carpets and behind paintings on the walls of bedrooms;
- in housings of household appliances;
- in sockets next to the bed;
- under window sills and in window frames.
If you suddenly find red bugs in your apartment, do not panic, most likely it is. They are not harmful to humans and cannot bite them. The soldier feeds on plant sap. If you encounter this bug at home, you can simply take it outside. He won't come back to you again.
How dangerous are bites?
Externally, they differ from mosquitoes in that they look like a path of several punctures. They:
- cause itching and irritation on the skin;
- lead to nervousness and lack of sleep;
- affect the psychological state;
- reduce performance;
- provoke allergies.
Scratching bites can lead to pustules. In rare cases, if a child is regularly bitten by bedbugs, there is a risk of developing iron deficiency anemia.
Fighting methods
There is no point in waiting for the bedbugs to leave the house on their own; this will not happen. Neither cleaning nor replacing furniture will help. Not even all chemicals are able to cope with annoying guests, although this The best way. Insects quickly adapt to insecticides. That's why chemical manufacturers come up with something new all the time.
Powerful chemicals of various forms are used for destruction:
- gels: .
- liquid solutions: , .
- powders: .
