What Do Bed Bugs Look Like: Major Facts You Want To Know About the Insects

Bed bugs have come to be a major problem these days for many people all over the globe. Tiny insects cause huge problems that only increase if you don’t stop the parasites in time. To prove that your premises are infested exactly with bed bugs you need to know what do bed bugs look like.

How Can You Tell It’s a Bed Bug?

Bed bugs try to hide from you, but to see them is not that difficult.

If you get up with rash blooming all over your arms and that is worse – your skin is itching severely with numerous bites it’s high time to suspect you are suffering an unwanted intrusion of bloodsuckers to your bedroom.

The best idea is to browse through the net and find numerous images of the bugs: thus you’ll have a clear image of the insects’ appearance and won’t mix them up with some other biting guests in your house.

There’s a wide spread myth that these pesky parasites feature too small sizes and they’re too fast for a man to spot them with a naked eye. Well, it’s not quite true: the pests feature the size of almost ¼ inch long and they are not able to move so rapidly to avoid man’s eye. Although their oval flat body allows them hide pretty effectively, so it normally takes much effort to spot them.

What Do Bed Bugs Look Like? Peculiar Characteristics

The pests have 6 stages of life.

Read: How Do You Know If You Have Bed Bugs: Major Sign of Infestation and Ways to Avoid It

The pests have 6 stages of life and just one of them belongs to adult period. In its larval stages bed bugs resemble their adult relatives but are smaller in size.

As to the coloring, the bloodsuckers vary and may feature brown or red brown body. Although newly hatched parasites are almost colorless. After the pests have filled themselves with blood they become dark red and increase in sizes sufficiently.

what do bed bugs look like? If you look at the parasites you’ll notice they feature two antennae and a mouth that looks much like a beak: with its help they pierce skin and suck blood from their hosts. Adult bugs have no wings and can’t fly; they move only using their six legs.

Read: Where Do Bed Bugs Come From and How to Avoid the Pests in Your Home?

How and When Can You Spot a Bed Bug?

It’s a rash from the bed bugs.

In case you keep waking up covered with rash most probably you’ll start looking for your unwelcomed guests and determine exactly who they are. Bed bugs prefer to hide in all kinds of crevices and cracks in furniture. They use various cracks in walls; inhabit picture frames, books, bed mattresses – is the most favorite place for them. Briefly saying they prefer dark places where they can feel safe and unnoticed.

As it was mentioned previously, the tiny sizes of the parasites make them extremely difficult to spot. Another factor that diminishes your chances to catch the insect red handed is that they come out exclusively at night. Early morning hours are just an ideal time for their bloody hunt. Thus, if you do won’t to catch any of the pests that annoy you, try to do it at night.

For this you can use your alarm clock and don’t forget to remain as still as possible or you’ll make them run before you can see anything. Use a flashlight for providing some light and try to make as few movements as possible.

What and How Do They Eat?

The only sources of food for these pests are warm-blooded animals and of course humans. They prefer people with tender thin skin which allows them to reach for their food easily.

Piercing human’s skin with their beak, the parasites inject in blood special anesthetic and anti-coagulant, thus you will keep sleeping and won’t feel anything. As a rule feeding process takes up to 10 minutes, after which bug’s appearance changes sufficiently.

Although as it was mentioned previously, the insects are night hunters, still there are chances they will come out for food during the day as well.

Lifespan

The Lifespan is directly dependent on the blood source the pests have access to. If food comes in on a regular basis, the lifespan becomes shorter- about 10 months. In case the bugs can’t reach blood source regularly, their life time expands up to one year and more. Thus, if bed bugs have a host reachable any time they need they may last for 3 generations.

In general the life time period of the bloodsuckers is 10-12 months and the peculiar thing about them is that they can exist without any food for quite long periods of time. The fact makes their extermination quite a complicated task.

If the pests are placed in colder temperatures, their metabolism slows down and they are able to survive much longer.

During her 300 day life she-bug can deliver about 500 eggs. Their hatching normally happens in 7-12 days after laying.

How Fast Do They Multiply?

Female bed bugs form nests and lay eggs in the same places they hide from humans’ eyes that is in cracks, holes etc. They can build several small nests, thus even if you find and destroy one of them, that won’t save you from the parasites spread and infestation.

The eggs laid by female bugs are extremely tiny, thus you won’t see them easily with a naked eye. White eggs are very hard to spot: in fact you can notice them only on dark surfaces. To know how fast the bugs multiply you just need to calculate how many newcomers can one female deliver at a time. Normally it can produce 30-70 larvae per month; the majority of them will survive and become adult parasites.

Newcomers are able to start reproducing already in a month after hatching. Thus, it’s a small surprise that just in a week’s term your apartment may be fully infested with the bloodsuckers and  getting rid of them can become a real challenge!

What You Need to Know about Bed Bugs’ Bites?

Bugs are always near the source of the blood.

There’s one major question that the majority of people keep asking: whether bed bugs spread any diseases with their bites. Fortunately, this has never been proved scientifically and up-to-date data conforms that no diseases can be transformed from the parasites to humans via bites.

Many diseases were in question, primarily HIV, typhus and of course Hepatitis B. And although scientists have proved that some grave diseases can really exist inside the insects, chances of transmitting them to people are miserable, that’s a great relief of course.

However, there are some other factors making bed bugs’ bites dangerous. But first you need to know how distinguish the bites of the bloodsuckers from the bites of some other insects which is pretty important.

Special Symptoms

Although the bites of these pesky pests are pretty similar to the bites of other bloodsuckers such as fleas, mosquitoes etc, they are still easily recognizable due to peculiar symptoms:

1. The major symptom presents multiple tiny welts on your skin, that always come in line or clusters. This happens because bed bugs tend to feed in the same place of your body several times. In time the welts become red and start itching. This causes a great discomfort and can become a reason of sleepless nights.

2. The next telling symptom of infestation is being bitten mainly at nights and waking up with similar spot patterns on your skin every morning.

3. The bites of the bugs will be located mainly on neck, face and of course your hands– the areas that are usually open at night when you sleep.
4. In most cases the bites will result in severe itching that lasts for several days and causes a great nuisance.

It’s pretty easy (and it’s often the case) to mix up the pests’ bites with the rash caused by other reasons: for example by bites of other insects or maybe allergic reaction to your new cleaning products or laundry, study the images of bed bugs’ bites and compare them to what you have.

It has been already mentioned above that bed bugs do not spread serious diseases, but still their bites can cause major influence on your health. Person may develop a severe allergic reaction to the bites which will result in various skin infections, sickness, nausea, and shock condition. There are a lot of cases when people have developed various physiological conditions due to the bites and couldn’t sleep.

How to Avoid Bugs’ Bites?

Read also:Bed Bugs Bites – All You Need to Know About Treatment and Prevention

To start with you need to be sure your problem is bed bugs and not something else.

And only after the fact was proved you have to start trying your best to avoid the bites, this means your major goal is to get rid of the intrusive bloodsuckers in your home.

Without doubt, the best option possible is to call professional exterminators and let them do their job. Unfortunately, it’s pretty expensive, thus some people opt for other ways of fighting with the bites. What can you do to get rid of the pest?

• First of all clean your premises thoroughly and get rid of any cutter around. Seal all cracks and try to vacuum carpets as often as you can afford;

• All linen and bedding should be washed in hot water above 120 F. The items that can’t be boiled can be exposed to sun for at least several hours: the insects don’t stand high temperatures and will go away;

• If you can’t afford buying a new mattress, use a special proof covers. Bolster and pillows should be encased similarly. This will allow you save the items from another infestation and eliminate the insects dwelling inside as well.
• Buy any of quality efficient sprays offered at the market and kill all the living bugs around. You can also use special powder for bed bugs and sprinkle infested surfaces with it. Wait a little and then thoroughly vacuum the areas and wet clean.

Remember, it’s much easier to avoid bed bugs than to get rid of them after they have settled in your house and started causing troubles!