Bed Bug Wall or Baseboard

Bed Bug Life Cycle

A few bed bugs can become a large infestation quickly. One female bed bug may produce up to 500 offspring during its lifetime, and three generations can live per year. Imagine how many bed bugs you'd have in a year if just one reproductive pair finds its way into your home. As with any pest, knowing its life cycle will help you eliminate it.

When bed bugs (Cimex lectularius) have adequate available blood sources they also have a shorter lifespan. Bed bugs who feed regularly have a lifespan of ten months, while those without adequate feeding can live a little more than a year. If a blood host is available, bedbugs can live to see three generations of offspring ready willing and hungry to prey on their human hosts. For a few people bed bugs represent nothing more than a nuisance. For many, however, repeated exposure to the bed bug saliva--which they secrete when feeding on you at night--can create an allergic reaction resulting in extreme discomfort. The bites can resemble other blood-feeding insects such as mosquitoes or fleas, so it can't be determined whether or not you have an infestation. Other than an itchy allergic reaction, bed bugs pose no other threats.

Bed bugs (females) deposit three to eight eggs at a time. A total of 300-500 eggs can be produced by a single bug. Their eggs are 1/25'³ long and curved. They are often deposited in clusters and attached to cracks, crevices or rough surfaces near adult harborages with a sticky epoxy-like substance.

Eggs typically hatch in a week to 12 days. The freshly hatched nymph is beige-colored before feeding, and then turns a redish color after getting a blood meal. There are 5 nymphal stages for bed bugs to reach maturity, which usually takes about 32-48 days. Adult bed bugs can survive for up to seven months without blood and have been known to live in empty buildings for up to one year.

To win the war against bed bugs, it is important to know the bed bug life cycle and to understand their procreation and reproduction habits. Bed bugs reproduce in the normal manner, yet their cycle of reproduction is very high. Theoretically the female bed bug can lay up to twelve eggs a day with the average being around five.They like to lay their eggs in dark, uneven places, in tiny crevices. The reason why they probably earned the title 'œbed bug' is because a bed is the ideal environment for them to lay their eggs.

Once the eggs have been laid, they can take from six to seventeen days for them to hatch with the average being eleven days. The newly born, but not too cute bed bugs are known as nymphs. Like any newly born baby they need to eat and to the best of knowledge available to science, bed bugs do not breast feed. The nymphs go out looking for food and the best source is that warm chunk of human flesh and blood sharing their bed which makes an ideal source for food.

If they nymphs do not find a source for food then quickly they will die. However if they find one, they are on the gravy train. Their development will be rapid, growing to a full sized adult within 21 days. They will thrive and reproduce in the warm environment of a bed, with their evening meal being delivered to it every 24 hours or so.

The life cycle stages of a bed bug are egg, nymph, and adult.

Bed bug females lay about 200 eggs, usually at the rate of three or four a day, in cracks and crevices in the floor or bed. Eggs are placed in cracks, crevices and other isolated and protected shelters. Females lay eggs after a blood meal. Eggs will hatch in one or two weeks into Nymphs. Newly hatched bugs(Nymphs) begin feeding immediately. At room temperature, and with an available food supply, the nymphal period will last 14 to 30 days. They shed their skin (Instar)five times before becoming adults. Bed bugs will mate soon after becoming mature, so the time from egg hatch to egg laying will be 4 to 9 weeks, under favorable conditions.