BED BUGS

Beg bugs are about 1/4” to 3/8” long (about the size of an apple seed), brown to reddish blood-sucking insects with a flat, oval-shaped body. Bed bug young (nymphs) are smaller and translucent white-yellow in color while their eggs are tiny (about the size of a pinhead) and milky white in color. The female bed bugs deposit 1 – 2 eggs daily and can produce up to 500 eggs (one bed bug per egg) in its lifetime. Nymphs undergo five molts (leaving behind a tannish shell known as cast skins) before reaching maturity which generally takes about five weeks. They need a blood meal in between each molting stage. Since bed bugs are very resilient, they could survive several months without a blood meal especially at cooler temperatures. They have the potential to live up to a year without feeding at 55 degrees F or less.

Where Bed Bugs Hide – Bed bugs are very secretive by nature and prefer to hide in dark cracks and crevices especially close to where people sleep or spend a lot of time at rest such as seams around mattresses and box springs, wood frame of box springs, on bed frames, behind head boards, on ceiling/wall junctions, top along baseboards, behind pictures on the wall, couches, chairs, etc.

Evidence of a Bed Bug Infestation – Despite their secretive nature, bed bugs eventually leave evidence behind. Evidence includes seeing the actual live bed bugs, dark blood spots on bedding and/or any of the above mentioned hiding places, cast skins and egg or egg shells.