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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.