Sleeping with the Enemy
Jeffrey R. O'Neill
Many nights of my childhood would begin with my mother tucking me into bed, telling me that I was now, "As snug as a bug in a rug!" She would then kiss me and say, "Goodnight, sleep tight, and don't let the bed bugs bite!" This would conjure up images of giant insect creatures chopping away my body parts with razor sharp mouthparts ("mandibles" I later learned in General Entomology) and nibbling on me all night while I slept. Not a great way to send a naïve and gullible kid to bed. I had no idea what a bed bug looked like until I saw them preserved in a vial of alcohol during Medical Entomology in my junior year of college, 1974. I was amazed at how small they were. They also looked rather harmless, but creepy. I had no idea at the time, that exactly 30 years later they would become a renewed menace to the peaceful slumber of many Americans.
Bed bugs are true bugs that belong in the Order Hemiptera (half wings) from the suborder Heteroptera (Heter refers to the diversity of life styles of the many types of true bugs), and the family Cimicidae, which includes 92 species of similar parasitic blood feeding relatives, the Bat bugs and the Bird bugs. The Bed bug, Cimex lectularius, aka the Crimson Rambler, the Wall Louse, the House Bug, the Red Coat, and the Mahogany Flat, has piercing sucking combined mouthparts called a rostrum, that folds up under its body into a ventral groove, when not being used. They are oval, dorsoventrally (top/bottom) flattened, and have short hemelytra (shortened forewings), and three jointed tarsi (feet). They measure 1/5 inch/ 5 mm in length, and 1/8 inch/ 3 mm across. They are little vampires sucking out the blood of warm-blooded animals, which is food, moisture, and a protein source to make eggs. Bed bugs are opportunists and will feed on humans, bats, and birds, which makes it difficult to pinpoint their origin in an account.
To fertilize a female Bed bug, the male must puncture her abdomen with his copulatory genital organ, the left paramere, and inject the sperm directly into her body. He can fertilize multiple females within 24 hours. Eggs are not laid until the female has a blood meal. Adult Bed bugs live for 6 to 7 months, and up to 1-1/2 year. They can live for several hundred days without feeding. Females with blood can lay 5 eggs per day, which she glues to surfaces with her own cement, and up to 200 eggs per lifetime. Eggs hatch in 6 to 10 days if warm, and longer if cool. Humidity does not affect incubation. There are 5 nymphal instars taking about 48 days to complete their gradual metamorphosis, and each instar feeds once on blood. If a host is not available, it may take up to 156 days to become adults. A nymph can complete feeding in 3 minutes but an adult can take up to 15 minutes to become fully blood engorged, with females having a higher capacity than the males. The bite of the bug is painless and often does not cause itching, unless one is allergic or sensitive. They are not known to transmit or carry any disease pathogen.
Evidence of a Bed bug infestation include presence of bugs, usually in clusters, red wheals on the skin from the bites, blood stain smears on walls, bedding, curtains and other furniture, egg shells and cast molt skins, brown and black excrement stains on surfaces, and a "buggy" smell described as an "obnoxious sweetness." This odor comes from a clear, oily substance produced by glands between the coxae and hind pair of legs. The bugs are active at night and hide by day.
The origin of the Bed bug is believed to be somewhere in the Middle East. The Arabic word for Bed bugs is actually "BUK" and may be the origin of the word "Bug!" It is most likely that the colonists brought Bed bugs to the new world within their straw mattresses. Bed bugs were a major problem for pest control professionals up until World War II when the development of new pesticides such as DDT and the organophosphates such as Malathion, reduced their presence in the USA to the point of near eradication. Why are they back? Bed bugs do not eat bait! The routine operating procedures of most pest control companies have replaced routine crack and crevice pesticide applications with monthly inspection and baiting for mostly ants and cockroaches. Baseboard treatment with residual pesticides used to be a necessary procedure for Bed bug control, and as long as it was being done to minimize cockroach and ant populations, it also kept the Bed bugs away. The continued use of DDT in many third world countries, due to its low cost, has also created resistant individuals that survive treatments and find their way to America in the luggage and furniture of foreign immigrants. Bed bug infestations have escalated recently in many major cities, especially in hotels, and motels near airports, and in apartment complexes. The requirements for their control are not as easy as one would think, and usually leads to multiple re-treatments.
The key to Bed bug control is inspection. Look and treat! It may take up to 2 hours to properly inspect and treat a hotel room when you add up the time to examine all the furniture and potential hiding places of the bugs. Washing machines, personal hygiene, vacuuming, chemical application, plastic covering of mattresses, and the use of an Insect Growth Regulator make up the IPM components for Bed bug elimination. An IGR such as Gentrol®, which is now labeled for Bed bugs, will stop the existing population from further reproduction, allowing the toxic pesticides to continually reduce numbers of individuals, and preventing the population from rebounding from any survivors.
Very few products are labeled for mattress treatment. Several synthetic pyrethroid products are labeled to treat the box spring, bed frame, legs, headboard, nightstand, dressers, baseboards, chairs and other potentially invaded furniture. Dusts can be used to treat electric outlets, picture frames, lamps, clocks, radios, and other liquid sensitive areas. Curtains can be bagged in plastic within the room, and dry cleaned or washed in hot water with hot dry. Curtain rods should be checked for bugs. Closets, bathrooms, windows, doors and vents should also be inspected and treated if necessary. Once the room is completed, inspection of adjacent rooms on both sides, above and below, should also be performed. This process could take many hours if done correctly. A Bed bug job is a new monetary opportunity for the Pest Control Professional. Make sure you take the time to do it right, price for the time required to do it right, and everyone will sleep better at night. Pleasant dreams!
