Bed Bug Bites in Leigh, Atherton and Tyldesley in 2010
One of the most detested and least understood pest species known to mankind is the bed bug (Cimex lectularius). How many of us fell asleep to sleep at night as children with the words of our parents in our ears “sleep tight and don’t let the bed bugs bite”?
Bed Bugs most probably started to dine on people at around the period when we moved into caves, the bat bugs Cimex pilosellus and Cimex pipistrella mostly feed on bats and it is likely that bat feeding species of bugs evolved to feed on human beings when our forebears started dwelling} in bat infested caves.
Up to the arrival of DDT in the early 20th century bed bugs were commonplace stowaways in most slum quality homes.
The later years of the 20th century saw pest operatives having very few bed bug problems indeed, their presence being generally restricted to budget holiday homes and student accomadation etc.
A lot of people mistake dust mites, which cannot be seen by the naked, with bed bugs which most certainly can be seen.
Adult bedbugs are reddy-brown, about a quarter of an inch in size and engorged after dining on human blood.
Bed bugs typically feed on human blood every seven to ten days, emerging in the hours before dawn and finding their target by smelling the exhaled CO2 from human breath and when close to their target, they sense body body heat.
Lacking a suitable human meal to dine on they can lie in a period of dormancy for periods of up to a year or more.
Often the first sign of a bed bug presence are spots of blood on bed clothes and on the base of mattresses and a lot of people can react badly to bed bug bites.
The early part of this century has seen bed bug numbers explode all over the planet, the easy availability of world travel and economic migration have both been put forward for the resurgence.
What is certain is that that are now making a real fightback not only in slum 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 requires, 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 enough to bring bed bugs to your own home.
They are an difficult pest to eradicate as contrary to popular notion they do not just live in beds. They live in any nook and cranny anywhere close to a sleeping human target, beds, electrical sockets, televisions, bed side telephones etc and dealing with them is both laborious and time consuming. They have even been revealed 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 needed.
Phone Harrier Pest Prevention on 01257 230637
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