How do bedbugs breed? The answer to this question will be interesting not only to people who are interested in learning the secrets of the world, but also ordinary residents of apartments, angry at small parasites for the inconvenience and discomfort they cause.
Bedbug habitats
Harmful insects firmly established houses and apartments, but, in order to avoid troubles, try not to catch the eye of homeowners; they go hunting only at night and hide in the most secluded places: cracks, crevices, furniture folds, cavities behind paintings, under carpets and mattresses, between books.
There, parasites produce numerous offspring, and they do this very actively. How quickly do bedbugs breed in an apartment?
Female fertility
One female per month is able to breed from 30 to 70 larvae; over the entire life cycle, this indicator is about 500 units of the younger generation, most of which successfully survive to adulthood. For regular egg laying, the female needs to eat normally. Moreover, the appetite of females is several times greater than that of males. This factor partially answers the question of how bed bugs reproduce in the apartment. Bedbugs mostly arrange their nests near sleeping places, the most comfortable in terms of access to food: after all, larvae and adult insects need fresh blood, and the close location of the nest significantly reduces the path to the victim. The nests of bedbugs, which often happen to be several in a single apartment, look very untidy, as they represent a warehouse of excrement, egg shells and empty shells left after molting. It is in such a mess that the female bugs are most comfortable to lay and breed.
How do bed bugs breed in an apartment? Knowing the answer to this question is very useful in solving the problem of ridding the living space of such parasites.
How bed bugs breed
Reproduction of domestic bugs is done by laying eggs, before which the female must undergo the fertilization process. This action takes place in a special way and is called "traumatic": the male attacks the female, pierces her abdomen with the genital organ, into which the sperm release. For a female bug, such mating occurs once in a lifetime. How do bedbugs breed if one male appears? Very active, because the latter is able to mate endlessly (sometimes up to 200 times a day) and with any partner: a female, male, nymph (larva) or any other insect (even a cockroach). Observations showed that almost all insects in the population, regardless of age and gender, have abdominal injuries, which indicates a connection with an adult.
Features of copulation in bedbugs
When copulating with a bug of the same sex, sperm are mixed, and so with each change of partner, until one of them hits the female. The female receives enough seed material for the rest of her life. For many, the above method, which tells how bugs reproduce, is surprising. But just such a method of fertilization allows bed bugs to survive in negative conditions; when a period of prolonged fasting sets in, a certain amount of underdeveloped eggs is used as food.
As conditions improve, the insect quickly recovers in reproductive activity.
Bedbug eggs: description
How quickly bed bugs breed? After fertilization has been completed, the female bedbug proceeds to laying eggs, and is able to lay 4 to 10 units per day.
Bedbug eggs that look like rice grains (white, a little more than 1 millimeter in length, oblong in shape) are characterized by high resistance to negative external influences. For example, the poison used to poison parasites is completely harmless to them, since it is not able to penetrate the shell. Therefore, after processing the room from bugs, the probability of their reappearance remains quite high. As an illustrative example and answer to the question of how bed bugs reproduce: new pests will “please” their presence after just one and a half months.
Conditions for the normal development of bugs
To ensure stable propagation of bugs, a number of certain conditions are required:
- temperature indicator + 22-30 ;
- constant access to food;
- plural hideaways;
- lack of sharp temperature differences.
How an insect develops
How do bedbugs breed? Under favorable conditions, after three to four days, larvae (nymphs) appear, which differ from adult specimens in a lighter shade of the trunk, smaller size and inability to carry out fertilization. At the initial stage of their development, nymphs are so transparent that through their shell one can see droplets of blood sucked from the victim. The nymph begins to feed on blood from the first days of its existence and, with a sufficient amount, actively grows.
In the process of growing up, it manages to renew the carapace 5 times. Moreover, a change in the skin depends on the degree of satiety of the insect. The color of the cover changes from light to dark brown or dirty yellow; the insect becomes black after eating: the more the bug drank blood, the darker its color will be.
Favorable temperature for the development of a bug
From the above, it is quite clear how quickly bedbugs breed. They grow just as fast, and the growth rate depends on the air temperature in the room. At the most comfortable rate of + 25-27 ° C, a young insect turns into an adult in a month and a half. At +20 ° C, the growth period stretches to 3 months. At +15 the larva stops developing and falls into suspended animation until more favorable times arrive.
Parasitic activity of bugs
The bite of an adult bug in the first hours is painless due to the injection of an insect into a special anesthetic substance contained in saliva. The effects of nocturnal meal of the parasite are detected only in the morning, when the swollen red dots begin to itch after a few hours. The larva of a bed bug consumes less blood than an adult, but it gives a person much more unpleasant sensations because of its mass quantity: there are several dozens of young insects per adult bug on the host’s body. In addition, the larvae are not able to inject anesthetic saliva, so their bites are very sensitive and cause a lot of anxiety to humans.
He
in a dream turns and crushes parasites with his body. Therefore, very often on the bed you can find small bloody spots, most often arising from larvae and young crushed bugs with not yet mature chitinous membrane.
How to get rid of home bugs
In the process of forced cohabitation with human bugs, the question of how to get rid of such obsessive parasites is constantly tormented. Unlike cockroaches that populate rooms in which cleanliness is far from ideal, bed bugs are completely indifferent to sanitary conditions and love any room. Therefore, if such parasites are found, it should be etched by any means until the latter have time to massively multiply.
One of the effective solutions against bugs is the combination of soap, turpentine, kerosene and alcohol. The resulting tool is required to process the places of the greatest accumulation of parasites. Bed bugs do not tolerate the aroma of wormwood, so the plant is recommended to be placed in the alleged habitats of the parasites. The latter will leave their habitat at an accelerated pace.
Bed bugs can not withstand low temperatures, so you can get rid of them by the method of cooling, especially relevant in the winter. To do this, furniture from the apartment should, if possible, be taken outside for several hours.
Bedbug Chemicals
The most effective in the fight against domestic bugs are considered chemicals that differ in type of action ("Executioner", "Klopomor", "Combat" and others). Some drugs are aimed at conducting several treatments with a certain interval.
Repeated use is required in order to have time to destroy the hatched generation before it reaches puberty. Otherwise, new offspring will deliver trouble to a person at night. Other insecticides remain active for several months and are represented by microencapsulated drugs.
Biological method of disposal
An ideal solution to get rid of bedbugs once and for all was not found. Most methods and drugs can destroy bedbugs and larvae, but are powerless in front of the parasite eggs. Therefore, the room has to be processed repeatedly. In the natural environment, the number of bugs parasitizing on warm-blooded (rodents and birds) is regulated by superparasites: riders and flies. The latter in the bedbug eggs produce their own eggs. The emerging larva emerges infected, because in its body the development of alien larvae takes place. As a result, after the first two links, a young bug often dies. Alien larvae in his body pupate and go outside with adult insects.
It is quite natural that at home getting rid of bedbugs by biological methods is unlikely, because not everyone will agree to the presence of flocks of midges in the apartment that can control the number of bedbugs at a certain time. To date, the most effective in the fight against bed parasites are insecticides.