Bed bugs remain a consistent source of pain for homeowners, office workers, apartment and the hospitality industry. Consultants reported growing 8 – 10% percent from the previous year. Due to their highly mobile nature bed bugs are challenging to manage in human dwellings. Long considered eradicated in most metropolitan areas, bed bugs are making a comeback. They are being found in cities across Pakistan, everywhere from homes to five-star hotels. Their presence is not the result of poor housekeeping. In the past, insecticides such as DDT, BHC, helped to keep the bed bug population in control with residues that continued working after the product was sprayed. Now, with the increase in use of bait traps & non residual insecticides, bed bugs became a challenge for professionals. In addition, people now travel more than ever before. Bed bugs are not associated with the transmission of any disease so far. TPL SERVICES provide expert advice on bed bugs control. Bed bugs like to travel in bags, suit cases, clothes and other luggage. They bite during night mostly, until and unless they are hungry and bite during day light and calm environment. They release anticoagulant chemical before biting which also has skin freezing capability and may cause itching after biting. Usually it bites three times in one night, which is usually called breakfast, lunch and dinner
BIOLOGY
They have an oval, broad, flat body and a short, broad head. Bedbugs cannot easily climb metal, plastic or polished surfaces and cannot fly or jump. Unfed adults are around 6 to 10 mm long, brown and wingless. After feeding, they swell slightly in size and darken to a blood-red color. The nymphs are shaped like the adults, but are yellow-white in color. The bed bug eggs are white, about 1 mm long (1/25 inch), and are almost impossible to see on most surfaces. The female bedbug lays at least 200 eggs in her lifetime, at a rate of about two or four per day. The eggs have a sticky coating and are placed in cracks and crevices, behind wood work and any other hiding places they can find. Like to travel in bags, trouser and jackets, can smell food or human being from 30 ft. They usually hatch in 6 to 17 days. Newly hatched nymphs feed as soon as food is available. A bedbug goes through five molts (shedding its skin) before it reaches full maturity. Adults usually live for around 10 - 12 months, but can live for a year or more and can breed year round in a home where environment is good for reproduction (like temperatures ranging between 21°C and 28°C). During warm period hatching occurs within 6-10 days. Under favorable condition, the period from egg to egg laying take up to 2 months. Generally, there are 3-4 generations a year. Bed bugs can live from several weeks up to roughly a year and a half without feeding.
