How to Prevent Bed Bugs in Utah

The purpose of this brief biology lesson is to make you a bit wiser about bed bug behavior. The first thing we should talk about is that you are their food source. They feed on blood anywhere from three to twelve minutes one to three times per week. They prefer human blood, but they’re opportunistic and will feed off a dog, a cat, a mouse, or a hamster. Females lay two to three eggs per day—they are egg-laying machines. Those hatch in seven to ten days. They have five nymph stages and are adults in one to two months, as long as they have a food source. The average life span of a bed bug is six months to a year and a half. They can live a long time without feeding, some as long as six to twelve months. Bed bugs are cryptic and spend most of their time hiding in cracks and crevices waiting for their food, aka you, to return.

Bed bugs have a unique way of copulating. It is called forced insemination. Basically, the male has a harpoon shaped genital that pierces the female cuticle in the abdomen. Women always think this sounds very pleasant. Females get copulated with often, generally after a blood meal, as males prefer to mate with fat females, so they almost always have enough sperm to continuously produce fertilized eggs. A female has to ovaries with 14 ovarioles and therefore always has plenty of eggs to lay. One adult female can cause an infestation. She gets brought in, starts laying eggs. Those eggs hatch and in 1-2 months they are adults and begin to breed with each other and we have an infestation.These behaviors are part of why bed bugs are so successful.

Bed bug bites are very difficult to identify and not everyone has the same reactions. Determining whether or not bed bugs are present should not be from bites alone. You need to find the bugs. Some people are not allergic to bed bug bites while others are very allergic and get red welts. People can also have a delayed reaction where the bites do not show up for up to fourteen days. Bed bugs don’t seek out water or eat cookies or crumbs left by your children, they feed on your blood. They feed from 3-12 minutes and then head back into hiding to digest the blood meal. Watch a bed bug feed here.

This is an aggregation of bed bugs on the bottom of a box spring. The box spring is a very common place to find bed bugs. The underside of the box spring on the head side of the bed is probably the best place to inspect for bed bugs. Whichever seat has the best view of the TV is also another great place to inspect.