One of the most reviled and least understood pests known to mankind is the bed bug (Cimex lectularius). How many of us fell asleep to sleep at night as young ones with the parting rhyme of our guardians in our ears “sleep tight and don’t let the bed bugs bite”?
Bed Bugs probably started to feed on people at around the time when we moved into caves, the bat bugs Cimex pilosellus and Cimex pipistrella mainly fed on bats and it is a fair chance that bat feeding species of bug evolved to feed on man when our ancestors started living} in bat infested caves.
Until the arrival of DDT in the early 20th century bed bugs were common unwelcome guests in most low quality homes.
The later part of the 20th century saw pest operatives dealing with very few bed bug call outs indeed, their presence being mostly restricted to low quality holiday hotels and student housing etc.
Many people mistake dust mites, which aren’t visible to the unaided eye, with bed bugs which certainly.
Adult bedbugs are reddish in colour, about a few milemetres in size and swollen after feeding on human blood.
Bed bugs typically feed on a target’s blood every few days, emerging in the early hours of the morning and homing in on their target by sniffing the exhaled CO2 from human breath and when closing in on their target, they sense infra red heat.
Lacking a suitable human meal to dine on they can stay dormant for periods of up to a year or more.
Signs of a bed bug presence are spots of blood on bed clothes and on the base of mattresses and many people can react badly to the bites of these bugs.
The early part of this century has seen bed bug reports multiplying all over the planet, the easy availability of international and economic migration have both been argued as reasons for the resurgence.
What is positive is that that are now making a real resurgence not only in cheaper quality housing but top class hotels, schools and even hospitals.
One London borough cited a doubling of bed bug problems every year from 1995 to 2001.
|One night away in an infested hotel is all it takes, they catch a ride in your suitcases or bags. Pest control companies are also now reporting cases of transport related bed bug infestations on transport of all kinds so a simple journey to work on an infested tube or train can be sufficient to spread bed bugs to your own home.
They are an difficult pest to deal with as contrary to popular notion they do not just live in beds. They infest any nook and cranny anywhere close to a sleeping human being, beds, electrical sockets, televisions, bed side telephones etc and dealing with them is both difficult and time consuming. They have even been discovered found living under the toe-nails of infirm people and in the folds of flesh on very fat people.
They are not a pest that can be tackled by an amateur and a pest control professional will almost certainly be required.
Call Harrier Pest Control on 0161 930 8814


