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Bed bugs have probably been plaguing people for ever, particularly in warmer countries. In fact Aristotle wrote about them in 400 BC, but they were not prevalent in the United Kingdom until after the Great Fire of London in 1666. People thought that bed bugs lived in wood because the bed bug plagues only commenced after 1670; they believed that the bed bugs that had come in with timber imported to rebuild London.

They have been there ever since, except for about fifty years between the 1940′s and 1995. A similar pattern can be seen in most of the developed Western world, because after the Second World War there was a determined effort to clear out the old bomb-damaged city slums and start again. As they went through the cities clearing and cleaning they spread tons of DDT which virtually wiped out bedbugs and some other widespread household pests.

The authorities in the United States also went on the rampage with DDT with a similar result. Then something occurred and we can be quite specific about the date: in 1995 reports of bedbug infestations started flooding in again.

One area of London reported infestations of bedbugs doubling each year from 1995 to 2001 and the US National Pest Management Agency reported a 71% rise in bedbug incidents between 2000 and 2005. A pest control firm in North Carolina said that a quarter of the hotels it surveyed between 2002 and 2006 had a bedbug issue.

Bedbugs feed by inserting two tubes into the host’s skin, one squirts in a sort of saliva containing anticoagulant and anaesthetic and the other sucks blood. This saliva can result in irritation in some individuals in the form of lumps, which may or may not itch. Having lots of bites can result in anaemia.

The main risk most people run is secondary infection from scratching with dirty finger nails. In 2008, the World health Organization gave the opinion that there was some evidence that bedbugs might cause asthma and that being bitten repeatedly may make the victim more susceptible to other illnesses.

Bedbugs have all the appropriate equipment and behavioural patterns to be able to spread diseases, but there have been no known instances to date. However, knowing that there are bedbugs around can cause some people to obsess about them, which frequently results in insomnia and irritability.

If you discover bedbugs in your hotel, you should report it to the manager and if you stay in rented accommodation you should tell the landlord. If it is your own home you should seek guidance from the local Environmental Health Agency attached to the council, because bedbugs can spread from one house to the next very rapidly.

Many old terraced houses are not completely sealed off from one another enabling bedbugs to roam and establish new colonies and bedbugs can be taken home from hotels in your suitcase or clothing. Bedbugs are a matter for public concern, but they are not life-threatening.

Owen Jones, the author of this piece, writes on many subjects, but is currently involved with bed bugs spray. If you are interested in this, please visit our website now at Picture Of Bed Bugs for more information.

Although people are severely affected by an influx of bed bugs, the medical authorities declare that they are not a serious health hazard. Tell that to people who are suffering from bed bugs! Bed bugs are not known to pass on disease, that is a fact, but they cause paranoia and insomnia which can have far ranging results.

On top of this, bed bugs are very problematic to get rid of from one’s home. The difficulty is that bedbugs are almost completely resistant to insecticides. This is because they have a thick waxy coat which prevents chemicals from attacking the insect. Bedbugs are like a cross between a beetle and a tick.

Unfortunately, it is almost impossible to eradicate an infestation of bed bugs on your own. Bedbugs are susceptible to heat, so you can steam clean your house to get rid of bedbugs, but the only guaranteed method is to call in professional pest controllers.

If you think that you might have a bedbug infestation, there are a number of things that you must look out for. Firstly, the bugs themselves: if you have a great deal of clutter in your accommodation like heaps of newspapers, heaps of ironing or clothes, move them and be on the look out for insects running for cover. Bedbugs are actually fairly shy animals.

Look in your bed sheets. Look for flecks of blood – your blood – and excrement – the bedbugs’ excrement, which looks like russet smears. You may also see shed skins – skins that the bedbugs have shed as part of their growing process, like a snake does.

Bed bugs live in beds, clutter, clothing, cracks, torn wallpaper, broken plaster, under carpets and anywhere that is narrow and safe. They like to hide behind skirting boards, so sealing these up with mastic is a decent idea.

The best way to be clear of bed bugs is not to have them in the first place, but this is easier said than done, because there is a real epidemic of bedbugs in the West. Almost all western cities are experiencing a plague of bedbugs and have been since the mid-Nineties.

Bed bugs do not just live in homes. Bed bugs live everywhere: not just in poor homes, not only in dirty houses and not only in houses even. A bedbug can be picked from anywhere where people gather together, because bedbugs move about by hitching a lift on a human carrier. You can pick up a bedbug on a bus, in a taxi, at the cinema, in your doctor’s waiting room or in a hotel.

This is quite frightening, because it suggests that you can never be safe from bed bugs. If you hang your coat up in a cloakroom or travel on public transport, you have a very high risk of picking up a bed bug and one bedbug can lay 300 eggs. Then you are really in trouble.

Not only that, but bedbugs can go without food for a year, like fleas can, so if you move into a ‘new’ apartment or house, these insects could be lying dormant waiting for you to give them a wake-up call.

Owen Jones, the author of this piece, writes on many topics, but is currently concerned with bed bugs spray. If you are interested in this, please go over to our website now at Picture Of Bed Bugs for further information.

If you wake up one morning with prickly lumps on your body, you will probably think that you had been bitten by mosquitoes or ants the night before, but there is also a possibility that bedbugs have got at you. If this occurs in your own bed, then you have problems. If you are in a hotel, go and make a complaint to the manager.

You can be sure that most hotel managers will take complaints about bed bugs very gravely, because it is well known that the numbers of bedbugs are rising rapidly and have been since 1995. It is also common knowledge that large compensation awards have been made against hotels. Some of them were at hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Most so-called ‘bed bugs’ will only feed on humans if their favourite host, often chickens, are not available, but there is one that only feeds on human blood and that species is called Cimex lectularius.

Cimex lectularius was virtually extinct in the developed world by the late 1950′s because of the extensive use of DDT in residences and hotels to eradicate all insects such as ants, bed bugs, silverfish, millipedes and cockroaches.

However, there has been a massive resurgence in the number of bedbugs since 1995. In fact, between 1995 and 2001, one report on bedbugs in London reported that incidents of bedbug call-outs had doubled each year.

The recovery in bedbug numbers has been ascribed to global travel and immigration from Asia and Africa. However, it is also likely that they were never completely wiped out and that they have become resistant to modern pesticides. There is not much you can put down or spray around now that will kill bedbugs.

So, what do bed bugs look like? Well, there are lots of different types of bed bugs, but most of them are brownish, unless they have just fed and then there is a red tint to them. However, they can also be white to yellowish. Occasionally, they look banded because bedbugs are covered with short hairs which reflect light like a stripy lawn.

Bedbugs have a beak-like mouth-piece with two tubes. One tube pumps spittle into you and the other sucks blood out. The saliva contains anti-coagulant and a pain-killer, so that you do not know that you have been bitten until long after the bedbug has left.

Some people never know, because they are not allergic to the saliva, others get a lump or slight swelling almost right away, but sometimes the swelling can take a week to come out. These bites may or may not be itchy.

If you travel a lot, or if you go to parts of the world that are less involved with hygiene, you must be careful about not taking bedbugs home with you. They will not remain on your body, but they may lay eggs in your clothing or hole up in your suitcase. Therefore, either before you go home or immediately on arrival have your clothes washed at a temperature above 46c and blast your suitcase with a jet of steam or hot air.

Owen Jones, the writer of this piece, writes on many subjects, but is at present concerned with bed bugs extermination. If you are interested in this, please visit our website now at Picture Of Bed Bugs for further information.

Do you know whether you have ever come across a bed bug? You probably have not. Not yet, but the chances that you will are increasing every day. This is because bed bugs are experiencing an explosion in their numbers and mankind is fairly helpless to stop them at the moment, although a number of people are working on it.

You see, the difficulty is that bed bugs are pretty much resistant to every pesticide that we have. They were almost wiped out in the West in the Forties and Fifties with the widespread use of DDT, but the ones that survived and the ones that have been carried into the country are tolerant to pesticides.

Scientists are working on insecticides that will be effective against bed bugs, but there is no light at the end of the tunnel so far.

So, we are stuck with a burgeoning population of bed bugs. How do you get bed bugs? Usually, you just pick them up and take them home or someone does it for you. It is thought that foreign travel and immigration are largely responsible for the first members of our new bed bug community.

Nowadays, you can pick them up anywhere where people go: taxis, movie theaters, restaurants, hotels, motels, cars, buses and planes. Even in the doctor’s surgery.

It used to be believed that bed bugs only flourished in poor peoples’ houses, but this is untrue. In fact, the rich are more likely to get them than the poor, because they travel more often. You can also be given bedbugs in secondhand furniture, clothing and suitcases.

Bedbugs like to creep into in cracks, so you could be sitting on a bus and one will clamber up the back of your coat and nuzzle under your collar. There it might lay a few eggs and walk off or it might go to sleep. When you get home, you will put your coat in the wardrobe and a few days later you will have your very own family of hungry little bedbugs. It is that easy.

Some bedbugs will also live on birds and bats. These bedbugs would rather bird blood, but if there are not many around, you may find them dropping from the ceiling onto you, if you have birds or bats in your loft. Bats are protected now, so you will have to have them removed, but you ought to discourage birds from nesting above you.

The bedbugs will be attracted to the CO2 on your breath and your body heat and then they use pheromones to tell the others where you are. It usually only takes a bedbug five minutes to feed and then it goes back home to sleep it off for three to five days.

A mature bedbug has gone through six moultings and after a mature female has been inseminated, she can lay between 300 and 1,000 eggs in her lifetime of about six to twelve months. She will lay several eggs a day and they will hatch out in about ten days. So, you only need one pregnant female and you are in trouble very soon.

If you have a few dozen females laying eggs in your mattress, it will take less than a fortnight before dozens of newborn bedbugs (called nymphs) are hatching out every day and then one of their relatives will lead them straight to you.

Owen Jones, the author of this article, writes on many topics, but is currently involved with how do you get bed bugs? If you are interested in this, please go over to our website now at Picture Of Bed Bugs for more details.

The resurgence of the population of bed bugs over the last fifteen years has been attributed to the higher number of people going on long-haul holidays and the increased amount of immigration from Asia and Africa. It is not that individuals carry the bed bugs home on their bodies, but bedbugs may have laid eggs in the travellers’ clothing or the bedbugs may have taken sanctuary in the luggage.

In this manner they are transported home, and being very resilient to temperature change they thrive in their new home country. If the carriers are holiday makers, then the bedbugs could easily be brought into the hotel. This is how bed bugs can be distributed unknowingly by humans.

You see, bed bugs do not thrive in a dirty environment of necessity. Bed bugs do not care whether you dropped a bit of potato on the floor last week and did not pick it up. They do not eat what we eat, even if they are starving. They only eat blood.

If you exist like this, then you will attract mice or rats, cockroaches and ants, but not bed bugs. It is a mistake to think that bedbugs like dirt and filth. They probably prefer it pretty clean actually, but they do have to have cracks and crevices to hide in, but there are plenty of those in most rooms.

They like to get behind the skirtings and other woodwork. They also like broken plaster, peeling wall paper and ripped mattresses. Because they are so thin, they can get into almost any crack. This means that any hotel can be stricken with bedbugs, the Ritz, the Carlton, Holiday Inn – any of them.

This is the problem for us. If it was only run-down, dirty hotels that had bed bugs, we could stay away from them, but you just cannot judge a book by its cover.

There are methods of checking your room though. Look out for small bugs that look a bit like an apple seed. Look in the seams of the chairs and inspect the mattress, if there are any rips in it, have it replaced.

You can also check by lying on the bed to warm it up and then toss back the bed clothes quickly. You may spot a few fleet-footed insects running for cover. They are bedbugs.

Obviously, the first thing you have to do is warn the hotel manager. If you are not satisfied that he or she is taking you seriously, move or / and ring the environmental health department of the local authority.

Whether you find bedbugs or not, they still may be about to snag a ride home with you, so spray or dust your suitcase with a powerful pesticide before you travel home and to be really safe, have your clothes boil washed, because bedbugs cannot endure temperatures above 45c.

If you cannot arrange this on the last day of your holiday, make sure you do it when you arrive home, but make certain that you do not give anything you have brought with you a chance to get away and multiply.

Owen Jones, the writer of this article, writes on many subjects, but is currently concerned with bed bugs extermination. If you are interested in this, please visit our website now at Picture Of Bed Bugs for more details.