Observing Bedbugs
There are actually quite a few varieties of bed bug, but the one that most people mean by ‘bedbugs’ is Cimex lectularius. Other species of bedbugs will extract human blood, but usually only if their preferred host, like poultry, is unavailable.
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 have a close look at, because they are very quick and only come out at night. In fact, their preferred dinner time is more of an early breakfast, because they normally dine on us an hour before dawn. If you want to find or catch some bedbugs, this is the best time too do it, because you may see them trying to get home with full stomachs to sleep it off for a few days before setting 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 way 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 slow coaches with the soap.
Then you will have plenty of time to study them under a magnifying glass. If they are not living in your mattress and you are sure that you have bed bugs, check behind any loose-fitting woodwork.
They love to get into dark crevices to sleep it off and skirting boards or architrave are perfect. So is damaged plaster, broken lino or ripped wall paper.
Hardly any crack is too thin for them, because they are so flat 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 frequently whitish. It takes six moultings for a nymph to become an adult and the moulted skins look just like the insect that left it, but with nothing inside it – as if it had been sort of sucked out.
The bedbug’s skin is in fact the key to killing it, as bedbugs have become resistant to most everyday insecticides. Their skin, or exoskeleton, has a waxy layer on it to prevent dehydration. If you can scrape off that wax, the insect will dry out and die.
Some modern bedbug sprays include finely powdered glass or silicone which sticks to the insect and as it wriggles into cracks, the powder scrapes the wax off. Diatomaceous earth was used for the same reason long ago and it is making a return in the fight to exterminate bed bugs. It is non-toxic and environmentally friendly, so safe to use in your home and close to your pets.
Owen Jones, the writer of this piece, writes on many topics, but is currently involved with bed bugs extermination. If you are interested in this, please visit our website now at Picture Of Bed Bugs for more details.
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