PEST MANAGEMENT FOR BEDBUGS IN CAMBRIDGE
Bedbugs are small blood-sucking insects that can live in cracks and crevices in and around your bed. Attracted by your body heat and carbon dioxide, they crawl out at night to bite your exposed skin and feed on your blood, just as mosquitoes do.
If you suspect you might have bedbugs in your hotel or bedroom, look out for the following signs:
- Small black spots on sheets, bed and mattress - bedbugs excrete blood which can be seen on your bedding
- Oval ‘bugs’, reddish in colour with, flat heart-shaped bodies
- Bedbugs hide in cracks and crevices on and around beds including mattress seams, bed frame cracks and holes, under loose wallpaper, behind skirting boards and inside furniture
- Bedbugs only bite uncovered flesh. So if you sleep naked without covers you will be bitten all over; if you sleep in pyjamas, with the duvet tucked around your neck, only your face will be bitten.
Other interesting bed bug facts
- Without food bedbugs can survive for between 80 – 140 days (and in rare cases up to 550 days)
- A bedbug can consume up to 6 times its own weight in blood per night
- A female bedbug lays between 200–500 eggs on rough surfaces, these eggs hatch after about 10 days
- There are 5 nymphal stages each requiring a meal before moving to the next stage
- It takes between 5 weeks and 4 months for a bedbug egg to develop into an adult
- Adult bedbugs can live up to 10 months
- While unpleasant, bedbugs are not known to transmit any diseases to humans
Control and prevention measures for bedbugs:
The biology of bedbugs makes them difficult to control without professionally applied insecticides on beds and surrounding areas – their presence can be extremely upsetting and stressful so you should take pest management action straight away.
