How come bedbugs always find us?

Well, bedbugs are creatures of the night and they have night vision Most experts think that bedbugs have a highly developped sense of smell and some companies pretend that pheromones along with heat and Co2 is a main attractant for bedbugs.

So they make  a bedbug pate that they sell as pheromones, the “scent” that will attract  bedbugs without having a clue what pheromones do. It is like the eleven spices and fine herbs in Col.Sanders recipe. Nobody knows what they are and they are supposed to make chicken taste better.  Of course spices makes food taste better but you do not need them to enjoy food.

The truth is that bedbugs do not need pheromones to find us. Bedbugs like all insects use pheromones to communicate between themselves and are totally indifferent to human smells. They detect us by sight, not by smell.

They have thermal vision, the same as mosquitoes, here is what they see:

Our body heat at 37,2C (98,6F) against a room temperature of 20C (68F) background.  How can they miss us, for bedbugs we are glowing. That is why they are attracted to our heat, not because they feel it but because they can see it.

Bring your hand close to them and it will make them react : 

Bedbugs can hide from us but we cannot hide from them.

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Bedbugs always go in the darker side og things

It is very simple, it is for the same reason. If they can see  heat which is the lower part of the light spectrum,  day light is too bright and blinds them.

Some people think that keeping the lights on at night will keep the bedbugs from biting them, they are partially right. It is difficult for bedbugs to see heat when there is too much light. It is the same as for us, we can see a fire from a great distance at night but it is not as bright during the day.

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How come bedbugs are attracted to Co2?

If bedbugs can see heat, they do not always see it.  Light is detected only in direct line of sight. Whe we are sleeping on the bed, bedbugs on the floor cannot see us. All they see is a faint glow somewhere overhead but which is blocked  by the mattress and the box spring. All they can do is try to climb up towards that direction. They need something else to guide themto the human sleeping on top of the bed and that is our respiration.

Everybody knows by now that Co2 attract bedbugs  and the same experts that think that pheromones attract bedbugs also think that bedbugs smell odorless CO2.

Bedbugs do not smell CO2, they can see it. CO2 is invisible to humans, if it would not be, we would see smoke blowing out of our nose with each breath we take, but that is exactly what bedbugs see.  Few people know that Co2 absorbs infrared and becomes dark for any creature that can see heat which is in the infrared.

That’s right, the bedbug thermal vision allows them to see what is invisible to us.

CO2 absorbs infrared

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ot5n9m4whaw

CO2 experiment

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SeYfl45X1wo

Kid’s Science Experiment To Show CO2 Is Heavier Than Air

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=fvwp&v=AvpenpBXAmM&NR=1

There are 200 millions bedbugs in New-York.

It is the motherlode of all bedbugs.

Wikipedia, The free Encyclopedia ____Bed bug infestations have resurged in recent years, for reasons which are not clear, but contributing factors may be complacency, ever-increasing resistance to pesticides, international travel. The current wave of bed bug infestations across America has spawned an industry for bedbug prevention, eradication and the reporting of infestations.

http://www.vdacs.virginia.gov/pesticides/pdffiles/bb-biology1.pdf

Introduction to the Bedbug Lifecycle

The bedbugs that are infesting homes today are the descendents of cave dwelling bugs that originally fed on the blood of bats. When humans began living in the caves, the bugs began feeding on humans. Later, when humans moved out of the caves and started their agricultural civilizations, the bugs moved with them. Since that time, humans have carried bedbugs all over the world.

Bedbugs belong to a family of insects called Cimicidae. All members of this family feed exclusively on blood. The common bedbug (Cimex lectularius) has five developmental life stages. Each immature life stage (called nymphs or instars) must take a blood meal in order to develop into the next life stage. Because bedbugs, like all insects, have their skeleton on the outside of their body (exoskeleton) they have to shed their exoskeleton in order to grow larger. This shedding of the exoskeleton is called molting. A bedbug nymph must take a blood meal to molt successfully. After growing through five instar molts, the bedbug becomes an adult. Adult bedbugs, both male and female, must also take regular blood meals to reproduce.

The diagram above illustrates the bedbug lifecycle including all instars, before and after feeding. The total development process from and egg to an adult can take place in about 37 days at optimal temperatures (>72° F). Adult bedbugs have a variable life span of two months to nearly one year depending on regular access to blood meals and favorable temperatures.

Feeding Behavior

Bed bugs have a cryptic lifestyle, meaning they spend the majority of their time hiding together in cracks and crevices where they will not be seen or disturbed. However, they become active at night, between midnight and 5:00 am. It is during this time, when the human host is typically in their deepest sleep, that bed bugs like to feed.

Bed bugs are known to travel many yards to reach their human host. Bed bugs are attracted to CO2 produced by the host exhalations, and they are also attracted to body heat.

—— However, bed bugs are only able to detect these host cues over short distances (about 3 feet away for CO2 and even less for heat). It is not well understood how bed bugs hiding in a closet are able tofind a host located in a bed across the room. However, bed bugs are able to move very quickly, and it is thought that they do a lot of wandering around before they are able to locate their food. —–

• ( The author does not seem to know that bedbugs have thermal vision and can detect a heat source by sight across the room as well as bedbugs can see CO2 from a distance as wisps and trails of dark smoke. Bedbugs do not have to wander around to locate their food.)

Ideally, most bed bugs would like to aggregate near the host’s bed, on the mattress or in the boxsprings, when they are not feeding. However, this is not always possible in heavy infestations where bed bugs are crowded and many bed bugs have to seek refuge at distances several yards from the host.

• (It is called natural scattering, there is also human scattering from intense cleaning activities and pesticide scattering from commercial products and bedbug management companies)

Once a bed bug finds the host, they probe the skin with their mouthparts to find a capillary space that allows the blood to flow rapidly into their bodies. A bed bug may probe the skin several times before it starts to feed. This probing will result in the host receiving several bites from the same bug. Once the bed bug settles on a location, it will feed for 5-10 minutes. After the bed bug is full, it will leave the host and return to a crack or crevice, typically where other bed bugs are aggregating. The bed bug will then begin digesting and excreting their meal.

Bed bugs usually feed every 3-7 days, which means that the majority of the population is in the digesting state, and not feeding most of the time.

Mating Behavior

After feeding, adult bed bugs, particularly the males, are very interested in mating. Cimicid bugs have unique method of mating called traumatic insemination. This mating behavior is considered traumatic because the male, instead of inserting his reproductive organ (paramere) into the female genitalia, he literally stabs it through her body wall into a specialized organ on her right side, called the Organ of Berlese. The male sperm is released into the female’s body cavity, where over the next several hours it will migrate to her ovaries and fertilize her eggs.

The traumatic insemination stabbing creates a wound in the female’s body that leaves a scar. The female’s body must heal from this wound and consequently, females are known to leave aggregations after being mated several times to avoid any further abuse. Studies have shown that the process of healing from traumatic insemination has a significant impact on the female’s ability to produce eggs. In fact, females that mate only once, and are not subjected to repeated stabbings by the male will produce 25 percent more eggs than females that are mated repeatedly.

In practical terms, this means that a single mated female brought into a home can cause an infestation without having a male present, as long as she has access to regular blood meals. The female will eventually run out of sperm, and will have to mate again to fertilize her eggs. However, she can easily mate with her own offspring after they become adults to continue the cycle.

Egg Production:

The number of egg batches a female will produce in her lifetime is dependent on her access to regular blood meals. The more meals the female can take the greater the number of eggs she will produce. For example, the average adult female will live about one year. If she is able to feed every week, she will produce many more eggs in that year than if she is able to feed only once a month.

On average:
• A female bed bug will produce between 1- 7 eggs per day for about 10 days after a single blood meal.
• She will then have to feed again to produce more eggs.
• A female can produce between 5 and 20 eggs from a single
• blood meal.
• The number of male and female eggs produced is about the
• same (1:1 ratio).
• A single female can produce about 113 eggs in her whole life.
• Eggs can be laid singly or in groups. A wandering female can lay an egg anywhere in a room.
• Under optimal conditions, egg mortality is low and approximately 97% of the bed bug eggs hatch successfully. At room temperature (>70° F), 60 percent of the eggs will hatch when they are 6 days old; >90 percent will have hatched by the time they are 9 days old.
• Egg hatch time can be increased by several days by lowering ambient temperature (to 50° F).
• Due to the large numbers of eggs a female can produce under optimal conditions (temperatures >70° F but < 90° F, and in the presence of a host), a bed bug population can double
• every 16 days.