We tell you how to get rid of bedbugs once and for all

Bed bugs are insidious parasites that interfere with a person’s good night’s rest. After waiting for the moment when all household members have fallen asleep, the individuals go hunting. Predominantly open areas of the body with delicate skin and superficial location of blood vessels - lips, eyelids, cheek areas - are attacked. The special insidiousness of ectoparasites lies in the painlessness of their bites. But within a few hours after the attack, the victim begins to suffer from unbearable itching and burning.

What bugs bite

To successfully combat ectoparasites, it is necessary to find out which bugs bite humans. In Russia, two types of things usually interfere with people's good night's rest.

• Bed bugs (nesting bugs)
  are the most common ectoparasites in apartments, private cottages, hotels and hostels. Until recently, they were the only representatives of their suborder, which caused a lot of problems and discomfort.
• In 2021, another species was discovered in some Russian cities - tropical bed bug
  , which also feeds on human blood.

Reproduction of bed bugs

To effectively combat bed bugs, it is important to know the features of their development, reproduction, and nutrition. This helps to find clusters of insects, select the optimal methods and time for their destruction.

The following conditions contribute to the rapid maturation of eggs and the formation of larvae:

• Temperature. The optimal range is from 20°C to 25°C.
• High humidity.
• Lack of bright light. Bedbugs choose the most dark places and prefer a nocturnal lifestyle.
• Availability of a power source. Without human blood, the bug will not be able to reproduce and develop.

The absence of one or more favorable factors significantly inhibits the growth of insects and causes their death.

Bed bugs reproduce by mating, using the method of traumatic insemination. The female requires only a single injection of seminal fluid into the abdominal cavity. After this, she is able to self-fertilize and raise offspring without a male. After some time, the female begins to lay up to 5 eggs every day. It reaches a size of 1 mm, has an oval shape and a translucent milky shell. Over the entire development cycle, the female produces up to 500 larvae. In the process of turning an egg into an adult, an insect goes through 7 stages:

1. White translucent egg measuring 1 mm.
2. White translucent larva 1.5 mm long.
3. Nymph is a dark larva 2 mm long.
4. The larva is without hair and chitinous cover. Body length – 2.5 mm.
5. Nymph feeding on human blood. She needs this for complete transformation. The bites are painful due to the lack of anesthetic in the injected substance.
6. The length of the nymph is 4.5 mm. She can reproduce and lay eggs, but not all of them result in larvae.
7. An adult insect, completely ready for reproduction. Body length reaches 5.5 mm.

The period of transformation of an egg into an adult under favorable external conditions is 1-1.5 months. If factors do not contribute to development, then it may drag on for 80-100 days.

Where and how do bedbugs bite?

The piercing-sucking mouthparts of bedbugs are capable of piercing even the thickest and roughest epidermis. But to attack, ectoparasites prefer to choose areas of the body with thin and delicate skin, where blood vessels are located as close to the surface as possible. The sweetest places for bed bugs are the lips, eyelids, and cheek areas. Where else do bedbugs bite? They may well leave punctures on the arms, legs and any other exposed areas of the body.

Does a bed bug bite hurt?

Immediately at the moment of the bite, the victim will not feel anything due to the substances that the blood-sucking individual secretes along with saliva. Itching, burning, swelling and discomfort in the affected area of ​​the skin occur several hours after the attack of the ectoparasite. Depending on the susceptibility of the victim, the first signs of a bite appear after 0.5-3 hours.

What does a bed bug bite look like?

If you look at a photo of a damaged area of ​​skin, you can see a trail of red dots. In search of a suitable place, the insect pierces the skin several times, which is why a whole series of bites appears. If there is an open wound on the victim's body, the bug will not drink blood from it. Skin puncture is a mandatory procedure before blood sucking.

How to detect places where bedbugs accumulate in an apartment

The most popular habitats for bedbugs
Before you get rid of bedbugs, you need to make sure that they really exist. Direct evidence of their presence in the apartment is the detection of insects at any stage of their development. Their nests can be found:

• behind the baseboard;
• under the floor covering;
• in the cracks of walls, pieces of furniture;
• inside electrical appliances, in sockets;
• in closets with clothes, books;
• in upholstery of upholstered furniture;
• under the mattress, between it and the headboard;
• in the folds of curtains, tulle;
• behind pictures and other hiding places.

In addition to direct evidence of the presence of parasites, there are indirect signs of this. These include:

• blood stains on the bed;
• red and swollen spots on the body, itching, appearing after a night's sleep;
• a characteristic smell of pests, reminiscent of old cognac;
• light brown husks (chitinous shells) and yellowish shells of already empty eggs in secluded corners of furniture and rooms.

Attention! While there are few bedbugs in the apartment, they nest next to the power source - the place where you sleep. As the population grows, insects spread throughout the living space.

Example of a bedbug inspection

Carefully inspect the mattress for black spots. This is especially worth doing when checking into the hotel.

An example of black spots and accumulations of bedbugs on the seams of a mattress.

Example of furniture inspection. There are bedbugs in the seams of the sofa. And they hide in the nightstand. Inspect the furniture if you buy it secondhand.

Example of inspection of baseboards and carpets. Characteristic black spots were found.

Why do bedbugs not bite all people?

There is no scientific evidence or explanation for why bedbugs do not bite all people. All assumptions that ectoparasites prefer a certain blood type and attack women, children or the elderly more often are groundless. It's all about each person's individual susceptibility to bed bug bites.

During blood sucking, insects secrete saliva, which contains anticoagulants, components with antiserotonin and antihistamine activity. The consequences of a bite depend on the victim’s sensitivity to these substances. A severe reaction may occur in people prone to allergic reactions. Some victims develop pustular diseases, but for most the consequences are limited to itching and burning of varying degrees. In the least sensitive people, barely noticeable wounds appear on the affected areas of the skin.

Due to the individual reaction to the components of saliva, a few hours after a bedbug attack, one household member may develop a trail of bites and severe itching, while another may have a couple of wounds that cause virtually no discomfort. For this reason, there is a misconception that blood-sucking ectoparasites bite people selectively.

What to do if bedbugs bite a child

The situation is complicated by the fact that children do not tolerate the itching, but scratch the bites until scratches form. Then, instead of swelling, wounds form, which become infected and fester. In addition, most medications are contraindicated in young children.

You can help your child in the following ways:

1. Wipe the bite area with a cotton ball soaked in soap and water.
2. From medications, choose syrups, but first consult with a pediatrician or at least a pharmacist at the pharmacy.
3. For advanced bites, doctors recommend corticosteroid medications. For children's skin, it is allowed to use zinc ointment.

If you don't have anything suitable at hand, apply something cold to the bite site and hold it for 20 minutes.

Do bedbugs bite animals?

Owners of cats and dogs often ask: “Do bed bugs bite animals?” Ectoparasites attack pets in exceptional cases. All other things being equal, they will always choose a person as a victim.

The blood of warm-blooded animals is suitable for bed bugs as food, but the limbs of ectoparasites are not adapted to move through thick fur. Individuals can attack cats and dogs if members of the household have gone on vacation for a long time. In this case, the parasites will prefer animal blood to prolonged starvation.

Pet owners who are not familiar with entomology often confuse fleas and bed bugs. Externally, these insects are similar and resemble small dark bugs.

How to distinguish a flea from a bedbug?

If an animal behaves restlessly during a parasite attack, and you find a small blood-sucking individual in the fur, it is a flea. When bed bugs bite, they secrete substances that block pain. In this case, the inflammation that bothers the dog or cat appears only after some time.

What causes bed bugs

Bed bugs are found in homes if they:

• Lived here before you moved into the property
• They became a natural consequence of non-compliance with sanitary and hygienic standards
• Appeared by chance

The first two reasons often accompany each other. You may encounter this situation if, for example, you purchased housing on the secondary market, moved into a rented apartment, or inherited real estate. If unclean neighbors live behind the wall, bedbugs can crawl from them, however, we are not talking about the quality of cleaning, but about cases of pathological unsanitary conditions.

Helpful advice

Bedbugs can live in attics and basements if there are stray animals and birds nesting there, although in multi-story buildings the management company must carry out preventative insect control treatments.

Bed bugs can accidentally get into the house:

• In packaging materials (cardboard, paper, etc.)
• Together with new or used upholstered furniture
• With used and new items, clothing and interior items
• From public transport if they get attached to your clothes
• On the fur of pets after a walk or trip to the country
• In a suitcase or backpack when returning home from vacation
• Along with the things you left in public locker rooms
• Independently, penetrating through cracks in walls and communications
• Through ventilation and open windows

For a comfortable life, bedbugs need suitable environmental conditions and the presence of a stable food source, so what is more important is not what causes bed bugs, but why they decide to stay in one place or another. It is highly advisable to find out the reasons for the appearance of bedbugs only if you assume that they are crawling from somewhere on their own, and are not an unfortunate accident, and you need to understand what needs to be fixed in the house in order to block their paths of movement.

Bedbugs bite, what should I do? Therapeutic tactics and control of ectoparasites

If your family is bitten by bedbugs at night, the first thing to do is treat the wounds to reduce pain. The need for medical procedures depends on the reaction of the victim's body.

From a clinical point of view, a bedbug bite is a blister that turns into a papule. The hemorrhagic nature of skin lesions is associated with the penetration into the victim’s body of hemolyzing substances and components that prevent blood clotting. In rare cases, a local bullous and hyperergic reaction occurs.

Bedbug bites in 80% of cases lead to...

to the appearance of an allergic reaction:

• increased body temperature;
• headache;
• rash on areas of the skin that is not associated with the location of the bites.

Massive and regular attacks of ectoparasites on children often cause anemia.

Treatment of the consequences of bedbug bites depends on the sensitivity of the victim to the anti-clotting components of saliva. Fenistil gel, emulsion or other antihistamines and topical glucocorticosteroid drugs will help reduce the manifestation of a local allergic reaction. The active substance in these products blocks the sensation of itching and burning, reduces the permeability of blood vessels and reduces the severity of allergic symptoms. The cooling effect of the gel also helps relieve pain.

If bullous rashes appear at the bite sites, the blisters are opened, and the wounds are treated with a disinfecting solution, which promotes rapid healing of the affected area.

In rare cases, multiple bedbug bites lead to severe allergic reactions, including suffocation and angioedema. To eliminate danger to life, urgent hospitalization of the victim is necessary.

Fighting bed bugs

Bed bugs

– potential carriers of pathogens of invasive and infectious diseases. In laboratory conditions, it was found that in the body of ectoparasites, 5 types of pathogenic microorganisms are able to reproduce successfully, and 3 types can be transmitted to animals during a bite. In the body of bed bugs living in the natural environment, 15 carriers of various types of diseases were found.

After carrying out the necessary medical procedures, you should think about tactics for eliminating unwanted neighbors. If at least a few blood-sucking ectoparasites are found in the house, you should immediately begin to fight them, before the insects have time to lay eggs and reproduce. Destroying individual individuals is much easier than clearing a house of a huge population of annoying ectoparasites.

You can carry out pest control yourself or seek help from a professional SES. The first option can be effective in the initial stages of the appearance of parasites, when they have not yet had time to lay eggs and reproduce. In other cases, it is better to give preference to professional methods of struggle.

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Killing bed bugs yourself

Exterminating bed bugs on your own will require a lot of effort and time from household members. It is important to treat all nesting sites of parasites with insecticides. If at least one insect habitat remains unnoticed, the surviving individuals will quickly restore the population size. It is necessary to look for nests of bed bugs in all dark and hard-to-reach places in the apartment:

• the reverse side of the carpet and wall paintings;
• areas of wallpaper coming off the walls;
• space under the baseboard;
• dark cabinets and closets with dusty trash;
• joints of upholstered furniture and beds.

Insecticides cannot kill bed bug eggs. Therefore, to clean a house from ectoparasites, two or more disinsections are often required. The first treatment is aimed at the destruction of adult individuals, and subsequent treatments are aimed at the death of emerging young ectoparasites.

Professional methods for exterminating bed bugs

An effective way to combat blood-sucking bedbugs is professional disinfestation with cold fog. The essence of the method is to spray a chemical solution using special equipment - a generator. It releases insecticide at high speed in the form of tiny particles that float in the air and gradually settle on all surfaces, penetrating into cracks, crevices, and corners. Hard-to-reach areas where bed bugs can hide are thoroughly treated without much effort. The procedure for disinfesting an entire apartment using the cold fog method takes only a few hours.

How long does a bed bug live?

During its life, an insect goes through several stages of development, each of which takes a fixed period of time. How long a bedbug lives in general depends more on external conditions and circumstances.

• If the bug does not die for reasons beyond its control - persecution or physical destruction, its lifespan can be on average 1-1.5 years.
• Bedbugs lay eggs, which hatch after about 2 weeks into larvae that look like smaller copies of adult insects.
• Depending on environmental conditions and the availability of sufficient food, the larvae turn into adult insects in 1–1.5 months.

Did you know that...

If there is a lack of nutrition or an uncomfortable ambient temperature, bedbugs are able to slow down their metabolism and briefly enter into suspended animation or migrate en masse to other rooms through ventilation shafts.

What to put on your body to prevent bedbugs from biting you

Exterminators may not always arrive on the same day as your call. Sometimes you have to wait several days. In this case, traditional methods will help reduce the likelihood of an attack by blood-sucking parasites. They are based on the use of pungent odors that insects cannot stand. Let’s outline several recipes for how to smear your body to prevent bedbugs from biting you:

1. Perfume, lotion and any other cosmetic products that contain alcohol.
2. Essential oils with a sharp, repellent aroma (orange, eucalyptus, pine needles).
3. Fish fat.
4. A decoction of cloves mixed with eau de toilette.

Any of these products should be applied to exposed areas of the body before going to bed. For greater effectiveness, you can place cotton pads soaked in essential oil near your bed.

Treatment with folk remedies

To relieve unpleasant symptoms and relieve inflammation on the skin, the following traditional methods are used:

• apply leaves of plants such as plantain or mint;
• treated with freshly squeezed parsley, aloe or garlic juice, which will help relieve irritation and swelling;
• wipe with a decoction of St. John's wort or alcohol tincture of propolis;
• apply an onion or potato cut in half (cut side to the bite site);
• processed with softened or crushed dandelion stems and flowers.

Do bedbugs bite after disinfestation?

Do bedbugs bite after disinfestation? In most cases, bites may continue for some time for two reasons:

• for the insecticide to destroy all insects, you must wait several days;
• disinsection was carried out incorrectly or poorly, and the drug did not have a negative effect on bed bugs.

The second situation more often occurs when disinfesting an apartment independently, when a person has not treated all the nests of parasites or has purchased an ineffective drug. In this case, bed bug attacks will continue.

If disinfestation was organized according to all the rules, and the insecticide actually has a fatal effect on parasites, the time of death of the insects will depend on their numbers.

If a large population of bedbugs is found in your home, it will take some time to eradicate them. Even professional exterminators are not always able to clean the house of blood-sucking parasites the first time. The fact is that the eggs and larvae of bed bugs are not susceptible to the effects of chemicals. Insecticides kill only adult insects. If bed bugs have already laid eggs by the time of treatment, repeated pest control will likely be required after new bed bugs appear.

SES "Des Group" provides professional assistance in the fight against bed bugs.

• The company’s specialists will treat the room using the fog method in a few hours using effective certified insecticides that are safe for humans and pets.
• It is possible to conclude a contract for one-time processing or long-term service.

Effective remedies for bites

The only correct answer to the question of what to do to prevent bedbugs from biting at night is to start exterminating them during the day. Until measures are taken, it is worth taking care of the treatment of bites. For this purpose, topical agents (ointments, gels, creams) and antihistamines are used.

Akriderm

The hormonal remedy, which is used after bedbug bites, is available in the form of ointment and cream. The drug helps to quickly get rid of unpleasant symptoms - itching, inflammation, and in addition, prevents the development of secondary infection. If you are bitten by bedbugs at night and have developed a severe allergic reaction in the morning, you should use Akriderm. If the symptoms of the bite are mild, it is better to use a less powerful drug.

Fenistil gel

When deciding what to apply to bedbug bite marks, many choose Fenistil gel. It is a well-known antiallergic and antipruritic agent. Reduces skin irritation and redness, has a local analgesic effect. Another advantage of the gel is that, unlike ointment, it is quickly absorbed and immediately brings relief, relieving itching after a bedbug bite in a matter of minutes.

Psilo-balm

Another popular drug among ointments against bedbug bites. It has a mild anesthetic effect, cools, effectively relieves swelling, and soothes irritated skin. Since the product tends to accumulate in the body, it must be used in strict accordance with the instructions, observing the dosage and frequency of application.

Elidel

Elidel cream, intended for the treatment of eczema and atopic dermatitis, effectively copes with the manifestations of an allergic reaction to insect bites. The product fights inflammation, relieves itching and pain, and promotes healing. Like many other ointments for bites, apply the drug to the affected area in a thin layer.

Bepanten

Bepanthen is a popular and effective remedy for treating various skin lesions. Cream or ointment is used against bites of bedbugs and other insects. The substances included in the drug provide rapid regeneration of skin cells, anti-inflammatory, antipruritic and moisturizing effects. The product can be used by pregnant and lactating women, newborns.

Bepanten

Menovazin

A time-tested drug that effectively helps get rid of discomfort after bites of bedbugs and other insects. The product is available in the form of an alcohol solution (considered more effective) or an ointment. It has a cooling, analgesic effect, relieves redness, and accelerates wound healing. The undoubted advantages of the drug include its low cost.

Erythromycin ointment

An external antibiotic is prescribed in case of severe swelling, infection of the bite site, or the appearance of pus. The drug relieves inflammation, eliminates itching, pain, redness and swelling. The product can only be used as prescribed by a doctor.

Conclusion

Folk remedies for bedbugs in the apartment give results . You get rid of pests without using pesticides, i.e. save your health and property. Some products, such as tea tree oil, emit a pleasant aroma and disinfect the air. Some - wormwood, kerosene, petrium - also affect other insects.

But almost always folk remedies scare away rather than destroy the population. the extermination of bedbugs and their larvae 100% .

If the ointment doesn't help

Not all ointments and folk remedies can help against bedbug bites. They are usually used for redness, itching, and slight swelling. If, after a bedbug bite, symptoms such as nausea, dizziness, general weakness, a rash occupying a large area of ​​skin, large swelling, fever, chills appear, you should immediately call a doctor at home. The human body can react completely differently to a bug bite. In addition to the listed signs, shortness of breath, joint pain, increased or decreased blood pressure and other manifestations may appear. In these cases, it is impossible to do without qualified medical care. You need to call an ambulance immediately.