ScientificName: Family Cimicidae, Many Species
Description: Adult bedbugs are reddish brown, flattened, oval, and wingless, with microscopic hairs that give them a banded appearance. Adults grow to 4 to 5 mm. Newly hatched nymphs are translucent and lighter in color and continue to become browner and molt as they reach maturity.
Habitat/Food: Bedbugs are very flat, allowing them to hide in tiny crevices. A crack wide enough to fit the edge of a credit card can harbor bedbugs [even in the ceiling]. In the daytime, they tend to stay out of the light, hidden in such places as mattress seams, mattress interiors, bed frames, nearby furniture, carpeting, baseboards, or bedroom clutter.Attracted by warmth and the presence of carbon dioxide, the bug pierces the skin of its host with two hollow tubes. With one tube it injects its saliva, which contains anticoagulants and anesthetics, while with the other it withdraws the blood of its host. After feeding for about five minutes, the bug returns to its hiding place. Cleanliness of their environments has no effect on bedbugs. Their numbers may be reduced temporarily by vacuuming, but will recover and require vacuuming again.
Life Cycle: All bedbugs mate via a process termed "traumatic insemination". Instead of inserting their genitalia into the female's reproductive tract as is typical in copulation, males instead pierce females with hypodermic genitalia and ejaculate into the body cavity. This form of mating is thought to have evolved as a way for males to overcome female mating resistance. Female bedbugs can lay up to five eggs in a day and 500 during a lifetime. The eggs are visible to the naked eye measuring 1 mm in length.
Organic Control: Treat all cracks, crevices, seams of bed springs, mattresses, door casings, back of pictures, electrical switch plates and furniture upholstery with orange oil products, plant oil products and natural diatomaceous earth.
Interesting Fact: Contrary to popular believe, bedbug are visible to the naked eye. You can even see they eggs as soon as they are laid.