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HOW LONG DO BED BUGS LIVE WITHOUT A HOST?

From the very beginning in the egg stage, red bed bugs have been a real difficult issue for people to deal with. This is due to the fact that they can easily hide in the smallest of places in the bed and attack constantly, day or night with the dark hours being their favorite for feeding activities. Other aspect of these insects that feed exclusively on human blood is the size they have when they are full grown up, not reaching longer than 4.5 mm in size. In every stage of their lives, the insects require blood to feed and develop in every step of their evolution. Since blood is the main source of feeding, these insects at their grown up stage acquire a reddish brown color which tends to get more reddish as long as they feed more and more.


Since they need the presence of a human being to get food, some researchers have taken as a main point of investigation the aspect of the life span of the red bed bugs without a host. The results of these studies have amazed common people who believe once there is no source of feeding, these insects die immediately. It was proved that red bed bugs can live up to more than 400 days without feeding in a laboratory at low temperatures; additionally in the nymph stage, it has a life span of 5 months without blood meal and to lay eggs females need first blood meal. But the investigations also established that these red bed bugs cannot be eliminated effectively by starvation.

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Blood has been determined to be the main source of feeding of these insects, and blood meal is required by them to go from one stage to the other. But with a life span of 14 months at adult phase without any food from humans, the extermination of the red bed bugs is hard to get through simply leaving totally empty the dwelling place. Another factor to be taken into consideration is the temperature; it has been proved that a higher temperature with the right supply of food the development of bed bugs occurs more rapidly.


So factors to favor the development of bed bugs are surrounding the areas of temperature and food providing, but they are an obstacle for these blood-sucking insects to get into adult stage even if empty places. If a person has left home for red bed bugs infestation, and decided to return months later; it could find that the plague is still there and other measures have to be taken into action.


A thoroughly cleansing of the house and bedroom with heat as the main actor in that process must be done constantly until the insects would be totally eliminated. For achieving this objective, clean and wash in high temperatures the bed clothes and other related clothes to the dormitory and check carefully in order to determine the presence of red bed bugs in the place of resting. Vacuum cleaners are useful in case of an infestation, keeping in mind that the bag should be thrown away as soon as the vacuuming is finished.


External factors should be also taken into consideration when fighting against this plague has been engaged. Ask gently to friend or relatives if they have a case of red bed bugs at home, perhaps they have noticed it and think they are safe. Since dealing with bed bugs has never been an easy task and most people ignore it completely, due to lack of information.

 

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