Bed Bugs, how a little knowledge saved thousands.

   / Bed Bugs, how a little knowledge saved thousands. #21  
I'm reading quite a bit and there's also a lot of mention of bed bugs becoming resistant to pesticides, and having a great success with inbreeding. So if one pregnant bedbug is left, she can reproduce and mate with her own offspring, and they with theirs, and so on.

Also, we tend to associate bedbugs with filth, but they don't eat filth. They eat blood exclusively. Doesn't matter if the house is dirty or clean, there can still be bedbugs.
 
   / Bed Bugs, how a little knowledge saved thousands. #22  
The only thing worse is head lice. The little kids get them at school, they're not noticed until there's a good infestation taking hold and then parents are lax about THOROUGHLY treating them, so it just cycles over and over.
 
   / Bed Bugs, how a little knowledge saved thousands. #23  
Seems as if they can make a pill that I give my dog once a month that rids her of fleas and worms, they could make a bed bug pill you take for a few months or a year.
 
Last edited:
   / Bed Bugs, how a little knowledge saved thousands. #24  
The only thing worse is head lice. The little kids get them at school, they're not noticed until there's a good infestation taking hold and then parents are lax about THOROUGHLY treating them, so it just cycles over and over.

Yeah, we had one family at my kids' grade school that would not treat their kids' head lice very well and they kept coming back to school. Finally, the principle would pull them into her office before shcool every day and inspect them personally, and, unfortunately, had to send them home on many occasions. It's hard on kids when their parents won't take care of them. Those kids were teased almost mercilessly once it got out they had lice so often. Kids can be almost as cruel as PTA moms.
 
   / Bed Bugs, how a little knowledge saved thousands. #25  
Yeah, we had one family at my kids' grade school that would not treat their kids' head lice very well and they kept coming back to school. Finally, the principle would pull them into her office before shcool every day and inspect them personally, and, unfortunately, had to send them home on many occasions. It's hard on kids when their parents won't take care of them. Those kids were teased almost mercilessly once it got out they had lice so often. Kids can be almost as cruel as PTA moms.

And THAT is pretty cruel.
 
   / Bed Bugs, how a little knowledge saved thousands. #26  
...make a pill that I give my dog once a month that rids her of fleas and worms...
So, we rear (raise) caterpillars and if the workers don't wash their hands (and they have a cat or dog at home) the residue from their pet's flee treatments will kill our worms!
 
Last edited:
   / Bed Bugs, how a little knowledge saved thousands. #27  
Is it true bedbugs give birth in the spring?
 
   / Bed Bugs, how a little knowledge saved thousands. #28  
Is it true bedbugs give birth in the spring?

If that's true, a waterbed or memory foam mattress would stop their life cycle. :thumbsup:
 
   / Bed Bugs, how a little knowledge saved thousands. #29  
From what I've read, they only lay about one egg per day, it takes about 10 days to hatch and 5-6 weeks to become an adult.
 
   / Bed Bugs, how a little knowledge saved thousands. #30  
Is it true bedbugs give birth in the spring?
Nope, we breed them year round. (not me personally, another guy has that fun... keeping a Bed Bug colony alive).

More tidbits:
"...When the controversial pesticide DDT was banned in 1972, most bed bugs were already resistant to it, Schal says, and today's populations are even more widely resistant..."

"By every metric that we use, it's getting worse and worse," says Coby Schal, an entomologist at North Carolina State University in Raleigh. Health authorities and pest control operators are regularly flooded with calls, and the epidemic may not have yet peaked. And because bedbugs are indoor pests, there are no high or low seasons throughout the year, he adds, only continual bombardment. "It's just the beginning of the problem in the U.S.," Schal says. This is from May 27, 2011

Tidbits from here: Top 10 Myths about Bedbugs - Scientific American
 
 
Top