Bed bugs are a problem that almost every person faces at least once in their life. In order to understand how to get rid of bedbugs in an apartment, it is advisable to understand how they reproduce and at what speed they spread throughout the home. Understanding that bedbugs lay eggs protected by a dense shell will help you choose the right insecticide that will kill not only the adults, but also the eggs.
In this article we will figure out how bed bugs reproduce, how many larvae a female can hatch in her life, and whether one bed bug that gets into an apartment can reproduce.
Stages of bedbug development, life cycle
In life, any bug goes through several stages of development. Moreover, an individual can die at any stage. For further development, bedbugs need blood, without which they will not be able to move to another stage. The entire development period lasts about 1 month, but the duration may also depend on various factors:
- Temperature conditions. For better life, a temperature of about 20-25 degrees is suitable.
- Humidity. Everyone knows that insects love moisture, and bedbugs are no exception.
- Darkness. Bedbugs live only in dark places, that is, if there is not a single dark corner in the house, then bedbugs will not be able to reproduce and exist there.
- Nutrition. To reproduce and grow, bedbugs need human blood. Without it, the population will most likely cease to exist.
In total, there are 7 stages in the development of a bug, which occur sequentially one after another. Egg. It has just been laid by the female. The eggs reach 1mm, they are translucent and oval.
- 1st stage of larvae. The larva has just hatched from the egg and started living. Reaches 1.5mm in length. The body is white, almost transparent.
- 2nd stage of larvae. The bug is already growing - 2mm in length, the body is gradually becoming darker. Such larvae are sometimes called nymphs. They are not yet capable of reproduction.
- 3rd stage of larvae - 2.5 mm. At this stage, the larva begins to actively shed hair, due to the absence of a chitinous membrane on the skin. The individual is still unable to reproduce
- 4th stage of larvae - 3mm. At this stage, the larva has its first feeding, as the body needs it for complete molting. Nymphs consume too much blood and cause inconvenience to humans, since there are 20 times more larvae per 1 adult. Small bugs do not inject anesthetic into the blood, so their bites are especially painful.
- 5th stage of larvae - 4.5mm. There is evidence that even at this stage individuals can reproduce, but not all attempts to lay eggs are successful.
An adult insect is 5 - 5.5 mm in length, such an individual is ready for reproduction.
Symptoms of bed bug bites
Bed bugs bite people and suck their blood. Bed bugs are active at night and most often bite exposed areas of the body of a sleeping person. The neck, face and hands are the most common sites for bedbug bites. Bed bug bites are painless and are often ignored. The main signs of bed bug bites are slight swelling; Skin itching and redness often occurs. Scratching the bedbug bite area can become infected. A peculiarity of bed bug bites is that they are often located in one line. Infectious disease experts call this “breakfast, lunch and dinner,” which refers to sequential feeding that occurs next door.
Bed bug bites can be mistaken for mosquito or flea bites, rashes, or dermatological conditions. Bed bugs have glands whose secretions have a specific odor; In addition, dark spots from bedbug feces may appear in habitats (for example, sheets).
There is no evidence yet that bed bugs transmit infectious diseases. Researchers, however, suggest that insects may be carriers of American trypanosomiasis (Chagas disease). Nowadays, research continues to determine whether bed bugs can transmit diseases.
How do bedbugs reproduce?
Bedbugs reproduce like most insects - through mating. Moreover, unlike other insects, sexual contact does not occur by mutual desire. The male forcibly inserts his sexual organ into the cavity of the female, piercing her and injecting seminal fluid. Bed bugs reproduce through trauma. The seed enters the female's abdominal cavity and is stored there all her life, thanks to which the female can independently fertilize and breed new offspring without the help of a male.
Female bedbugs mate only once in their entire lives. And they produce offspring (lay eggs) for the entire remaining time.
Moreover, from one such sexual contact a whole family of bedbugs can appear in one apartment. Some time after fertilization, the female begins to lay 5-15 eggs per day. It is important to note that males are not very picky in choosing a sexual partner, and often attack individuals of the same sex, or small females. It should be noted that according to research results, males with a pierced belly are very often found in the population.
How to find parasites
Bed bugs usually live in places where people relax: sofas, beds, armchairs. Their nests can also be located in baseboards near the bed. On the bed linen you can find bloody traces from individuals crushed during the night, because a person turns around at night, and they do not have time to move.
Fleas live under baseboards, under the floor, under the trash can, and in piles of old rags. It is impossible to find them in bed during the day. They can travel in pet fur or in pet carriers.
At night the flea becomes active and can jump everywhere. First of all, a person's arms and legs are affected. You can find fleas by placing white sheets around the apartment, where there will be more black dots, there will be a nest of these insects.
Bed lice live in human hair. Most often behind the ears or closer to the neck. They can bite constantly, injecting their poison into the bite site, which causes itching. Lice cannot live without humans and go into suspended animation.
Where in the apartment do bedbugs make a nest?
Most often, bedbugs strive to prevent people from discovering them, so they hide in all the dark crevices where it can be convenient. They are called bedding because they mainly live in mattresses, beds and under them, as well as in bedding.
These insects do not care about their habitat, the main thing is that there is a comfortable temperature, sufficient humidity, close food and darkness.
It is difficult to detect bedbugs during daylight hours because they are carefully hidden. The period when a bedbug is active when it can be detected is during a person’s deep sleep, which occurs early in the morning. Usually at this time people wake up from larval bites, which feel quite painful. At the same time, they live in nests, and can also reproduce in clothes.
The nest is in chaos, there is absolutely no hierarchy in it. In the “house” of bedbugs, larvae can be mixed with adults and waste products. Moreover, there may not even be one, but several nests of bedbugs in the apartment. In this case, individual larvae separate from the population and form their own families.
Breeding sites
The optimal place for bedbugs to breed is city apartments, where there is a constant, fairly high temperature, easily accessible food, hidden places to live and the ability to migrate to other premises in the absence of people.
Bed bugs try to hide their reproduction process from humans as much as possible. It is almost impossible to find their eggs in the bed. A thorough inspection of the home can reveal so-called nests, which are a collection of clutches, larvae and adult insects. There is no structure in the nests; the eggs are attached chaotically between feces and discarded chitinous membranes.
To find where bedbugs breed in an apartment, you need to check:
- bed frame and mattress;
- walls near the bed, especially loose wallpaper, carpets and paintings;
- furniture near the sleeping area;
- baseboards and cracks in the floor.
Masonry can be located throughout the room, but there are especially many of them near the bed. Bed bugs tend to expend less energy moving towards their prey in order to reproduce faster.
How quickly do bedbugs reproduce?
In order to understand how quickly bedbugs reproduce, you need to calculate how many eggs the females lay. Usually this is from 30 to 60 individuals per month. But you need to take into account that during this time the female will breed new females, that is, the reproduction process will occur in geometric progression. In this case, bedbugs reproduce through traumatic insemination, the mechanism of which is described above. At the same time, a female can lay no more than 700 eggs in her entire life, and she lives for about a year. During this time, the apartment can turn into “hell,” especially if a lot of people live in the apartment, since human blood is food for parasites.
How to resist bloodsuckers
The larva, compared to adult bedbugs, is quite slow; in 1 minute it can cover a space of 30 cm. Accordingly, the older it gets, the faster it runs. An adult runs at a speed of 1 m/min. This doesn’t seem like much, but what if you are observing 1 specimen, and when there are dozens of them and when detected they begin to move chaotically? Moreover, they can run on horizontal and vertical surfaces.
Trying to get rid of bedbugs mechanically is a futile exercise. The parasite's body is structured like a transformer, made up of segments. When a bug is hungry, it is not so easy to deal with it. The body is flat and weightless, therefore it contains practically no liquid. Another thing is after a meal, when the body increases in size, it becomes more vulnerable.
Knowing how bed bugs reproduce, you need to prepare for the fact that the fight ahead will not be easy. You can make attempts to fight the bloodsuckers on your own.
For these purposes, insecticides are used, which are offered in specialized stores. They come in aerosol packaging, which makes application much easier, but does not give any idea of the concentration of the product per square meter. m. and drug consumption. Any chemical is poison, especially if it is a product released to combat living organisms.
You can also use folk remedies and wipe all surfaces in the apartment with vinegar and kerosene. This is the last century!
don’t go to extremes - call bedbug control specialists and sleep peacefully!
Today, this task is successfully handled by special sanitary services that provide effective services for the destruction of bed bugs. Their arsenal includes products that have been tested by repeated treatments of residential premises. Specialists from the disinfection service accurately determine the location of bedbugs and other parasites and rid the home of them.
There is only one way to stop the reproduction of bedbugs - the complete destruction of all individuals and disinfection of the premises in order to kill the laid eggs and larvae.
Can one bug reproduce?
For a long time they could not find a definite answer to this question, since they had previously conducted experiments by placing one female in a box and she began to lay eggs after some time. Now time has passed and the mechanism of reproduction of these insects has been fully studied. One bug can only reproduce if it is a female and she has already been fertilized.
Males themselves cannot reproduce, this was discovered scientifically through a series of experiments. Moreover, populations in which there were only males, although they made attempts to reproduce, it was not possible. In this regard, bedbugs are not able to reproduce alone.
Can bedbugs reproduce without food?
In order for fertilization to occur in bedbugs, both males and females need blood, otherwise their body simply will not have a sufficient reserve. Moreover, for this process there should be about 3-7 full meals (blood). Individuals feed only at night, for fear of being discovered. Bedbugs cannot exist without blood.
Moreover, bedbugs need blood not only for reproduction, but also for growth. At different stages of the life cycle, the amount of blood consumed by individuals is different. For example, bedbug larvae consume less food, but more often, while adult bedbugs drink more blood at a time, but do it much less frequently.
When bedbugs starve, their body begins to dry out, and all vital processes slow down. They become passive, practically do not move and spend all their time in the nest.
Comfortable living conditions for bedbugs
Like many parasites, bedbugs reproduce intensively, which is facilitated by their lifestyle and diet, consisting only of human blood. Their fertility is not decisively influenced by the sanitary conditions of the occupied territory, although they play a certain role. A cluttered space makes it easier to hide and lay eggs.
For bedbugs to reproduce, temperature and the presence of a nearby source of food – humans – are important. They rarely touch animals and birds, since their skin is denser. Parasites multiply more intensively in apartments where the temperature and humidity remain stably at the same level.
The optimal temperature for fertilization and laying for bloodsuckers is 20-30 °C. When the thermometer drops or rises to 55 °C, they die completely, at any stage of development: adults, larvae, eggs.
To reproduce offspring, the female bedbug requires regular and nutritious nutrition. After one meal, she lays up to 20 eggs. Therefore, female representatives go hunting more often and drink more blood than males.
During their life cycle (12-14 months) they lay up to 500 eggs. On a starvation diet, their sexual activity decreases. They may even fall into a comatose state. Afterwards they come to life and restore their vital functions.
Nymphs differ from adult exhibits. They move slower than sexually mature individuals, so they prefer to localize closer to the prey. And the nymphs are small in size. Representatives of different age categories cluster in parasitic nests; they have no struggle for territory.
