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Bed bugs have almost certainly been bothering people for ever, particularly in warmer countries. In fact Aristotle wrote about them in 400 BC, but they were not prevalent in the United Kingdom until after the Great Fire of London in 1666. People deduced that bed bugs lived in wood because the bed bug plagues only started after 1670; they supposed that the bed bugs that had come in with timber imported to reconstruct London.

They have been there ever since, except for about fifty years between the 1940’s and 1995. A similar pattern can be seen in most of the developed Western world, because after the Second World War there was a determined effort to clear out the old bomb-damaged city slums and start again. As they went through the cities clearing and cleaning they spread tons of DDT which virtually wiped out bedbugs and some other widespread household pests.

The authorities in the United States also went on the rampage with DDT with a similar result. Then something occurred and we can be quite specific about the date: in 1995 reports of bedbug infestations started flooding in again.

One district of London reported infestations of bedbugs doubling every year from 1995 to 2001 and the US National Pest Management Agency reported a 71% increase in bedbug incidents between 2000 and 2005. A pest control company in North Carolina said that a quarter of the hotels it surveyed between 2002 and 2006 had a bedbug problem.

Bedbugs feed by inserting two tubes into the host’s skin, one pumps in a sort of saliva containing anticoagulant and anaesthetic and the other sucks blood. This saliva can result in irritation in some individuals in the form of lumps, which may or may not itch. Having lots of bites can result in anaemia.

The main risk most people run is secondary infection from scratching with dirty finger nails. In 2008, the World health Organization gave the opinion that there was some evidence that bedbugs might cause asthma and that being bitten repeatedly may make the victim more susceptible to other illnesses.

Bedbugs have all the right equipment and behavioural patterns to be able to spread diseases, but there have been no known instances to date. However, knowing that there are bedbugs around can cause some people to obsess about them, which often results in insomnia and irritability.

If you discover bedbugs in your hotel, you should report it to the manager and if you stay in rented accommodation you should advise the landlord. If it is your own home you should seek guidance from the local Environmental Health Agency attached to the council, because bedbugs can proliferate from one house to the next very rapidly.

Many old terraced houses are not completely sealed off from one another enabling bedbugs to roam and establish new colonies and bedbugs can be taken home from hotels in your suitcase or clothing. Bedbugs are a matter for public concern, but they are not life-threatening.

Owen Jones, the writer of this article, writes on many topics, but is at present concerned with bed bugs spray. If you are interested in this, please go over to our website now at Picture Of Bed Bugs for further information.

There are in fact quite a few types of bed bug, but the one that most people mean by ‘bedbugs’ is Cimex lectularius. Other species of bedbugs will extract human blood, but normally only if their favoured host, like poultry, is not around.

Bedbugs are small, but not too small to see. Adults are about four or five millimetres in length and one-and-a-half to three millimetres wide. They are brownish in colour, but may seem banded because they are covered in short hairs.

Having said that, they are still not easy to have a close look at, because they are very quick and only come out at night. In fact, their preferred dinner time is more of an early breakfast, because they normally dine on us an hour before dawn. If you want to find or catch some bedbugs, this is the best time too do it, because you may see them trying to get home with full stomachs to sleep it off for a few days before setting out again.

So, rather than waste your time, it is probably better to study a number of pictures of bedbugs first so that you know what you are looking for.. Bedbugs are attracted by heat and CO2, so one way of trying to catch a few is putting a bar of soap in a centimetre of water and then lying on the bed. After half an hour, get the soap and whip the bed clothes back. You can dab up any bed bugs with the soap.

Then you will have lots of time to study them under a magnifying lens. If they are not living in your mattress and you are certain that you have bed bugs, check behind any loose-fitting woodwork.

They love to get into dark crevices to sleep it off and skirting boards or architrave are perfect. So is damaged plaster, broken lino or ripped wall paper.

Hardly any crack is too narrow for them, because they are so flat themselves, as you can observe from photos. They look as if they have been crushed. However, the nymphs or babies are very tiny, a bit rounder and often whitish. It takes six moultings for a nymph to become an adult and the moulted skins look just like the insect that left it, but with nothing inside it – as if it had been kind of sucked out.

The bedbug’s skin is actually the key to killing it, as bedbugs have become tolerant to most everyday insecticides. Their skin, or exoskeleton, has a waxy layer on it to prevent dehydration. If you can scrape off that wax, the insect will dry out and die.

Some modern bedbug sprays incorporate finely powdered glass or silicone which sticks to the insect and as it wriggles into crevices, the powder scrapes the wax off. Diatomaceous earth was used for the same purpose long ago and it is making a comeback in the fight to eradicate bed bugs. It is non-toxic and environmentally friendly, so safe to deploy in your home and close to your pets.

Owen Jones, the author of this piece, writes on many subjects, but is at present involved with bed bugs extermination. If you are interested in this, please go over to our website now at Picture Of Bed Bugs for further information.

Did your parents or your grandparents use to say ‘Sleep tight. Don’t let the bed bugs bite’ when they tucked you up in bed as a child? You had almost certainly never seen a bed bug and perhaps did not even know what they were speaking about, but they would have. This is because anybody alive previous to the Second World War would almost certainly have been bitten pretty often.

Up until the 1940’s or 1950’s, depending upon where your relatives lived, bed bugs were very common. Just about every street had them and because the houses were not sealed off from each other and because people were in and out of each other’s houses more often, bed bugs were spread far and wide. When they tell you: ‘Don’t Let The Bed Bugs Bite’, they are repeating a real wish, even a prayer from previous days.

Bed bugs were a part of everyday, or rather every night, life for millions of people in Great Britain for four hundred years. They had been around in warmer parts in Europe and the world for thousands of years before that, but they did not proliferate in Britain until after the Great Fire of London in 1666.

It is thought that they came to Britain with the timber and tradesmen that were brought in to reconstruct London. By 1670, bedbugs had become a plague on the population of the UK, like they were elsewhere in Europe. Fifty years afterward, bedbugs had established themselves in Jamaica and probably the United States of America as well.

Bedbugs like to live in dark cracks near to their source of food, which is blood. Not all bedbugs prefer human blood; some prefer dogs’ blood others prefer chickens’ blood et cetera. However, they will all eat human blood if their preferred host is not about.

There is one bedbug though, Cimex lectularius, that does only eat human blood and this is the little blighter that people are talking about when they say: ;Don’t let the bed bugs bite’.

So, bedbugs, if you have them, will be behind any loose-fitting skirting boards or architraves, loose wall paper or in damaged plaster or lino. Their favourite place of all in in a torn mattress. They are drawn to their blood donor by CO2 on the breath and body heat.

When they have located a host, they send out a message to all their friends and relatives by the use of pheromones. Bed bugs are most active an hour before dawn and it takes them only five minutes to conclude their dinner.

When they bite, bedbugs insert two tubes into you, one squirts saliva containing coagulant and anaesthetic and the other sucks up blood. This is why individuals seldom feel that they are being bitten. Sometimes they do not know for up to nine days and some people never know, because they are not allergic to the saliva.

Those that are allergic, may get an itchy lump, but it may not itch either. It depends on the person. Often the bumps are in rows of three, like flea bites. They are quite similar to mosquito bites, but they do not have a red dot at the centre. Luckily for us, bedbugs do not transmit human diseases, although many bites can temporarily damage the immune system and can lead to anaemia.

Owen Jones, the writer of this article, writes on many topics, but is at present concerned with bed bugs extermination. If you are interested in this, please go over to our website now at Picture Of Bed Bugs for more information.

‘Good Night, Sleep Tight, Don’t Let The Bed Bugs Bite’ is something that people said often to their children in the first half of the 20th Century. Some parents still say it even now, but before they really meant it, because there were bed bugs – everywhere. Western cities were seriously infested with them and had been for three hundred years or longer.

Bed bugs were exterminated in the Forties and Fifties by the widespread use of DDT, which has since been banned. In 1995, reported instances of bed bug infestations increased rapidly for the first time in fifty years. The number of bed bug incidents has been increasing ever since. Therefore, the saying ‘Good Night, Sleep Tight, Don’t Let The Bed Bugs Bite’ has become pertinent again.

The trouble is that it is very, very hard to prevent them biting and it is almost as hard to eradicate them, because modern bedbugs have become almost completely resistant to the insecticides that we have available to us today.

Scientists in several companies are working on chemicals to eradicate bedbugs, but as of yet, there has not been much advancement. Pharaoh ant venom is deadly to bedbugs, but it is proving difficult to synthesize in suitable volumes.

If you suspect that you have bed bugs, you will probably have seen a few bugs, have had a few bites or have seen bedbug droppings. Bed bugs are small, brown, wingless insects about three-sixteenths of an inch long and a little rounded on top although their general look is flattish.

Bedbug bites frequently result in bumps, which may come up up to nine days after you were bitten. Occasionally they are in rows of three like flea bites. They are usually itchy. Bed bug droppings are brown. They often look like brown streaks on a sheet.

If you have bedbugs, there is not a lot you can do yourself. Bedbugs do not inevitably live in dirty conditions. However, they do like clutter, because it provides more hiding places. If you have had books, magazines or clothes lying in the same spot for weeks, move them to see if bedbugs come out.

If you are in hired accommodation, get in touch with your landlord. If you own your own home, you have a big problem. The first move should be to check with your local heath authorities for the phone number of a reputable, experienced, professional pest controller.

While you are waiting for them to come round, tidy away all your clutter and strip your beds. Bedbugs, in all their forms, are killed by temperatures above 46C (120F), so either put your clothes on a boil wash or put them in the clothes dryer on a hot temperature.

A good pest controller will inspect your property meticulously and give you a detailed report and a price tag. The report will include an action plan of how to prepare for treatment and avoid further infestation. The price of the clean-up should be based on this report, it should not be a flat fee.

Owen Jones, the author of this piece, writes on many topics, but is at present concerned with how do you get bed bugs? If you are interested in this, please go over to our website now at Picture Of Bed Bugs for more details.