Manchester & Trafford Pest Control

Posts Tagged ‘Cimex’

Bed Bugs in Manchester, Lancashire, Merseyside and Cheshire

Harrier Pest Control 0800 019 8382

Bed Bugs in Manchester, Lancashire, Merseyside and Cheshire – One of the most hated and misunderstood pests known to man is the bed bug (Cimex lectularius). How many of us dozed off to sleep at night as children with the words of our parents in our ears ‘sleep tight and don’t let the bed bugs bite’?

Manchester Bed Bugs

Bed bugs may have started to feed on man at about the time we moved into caves, the ‘bat bugs’ Cimex pilosellus and Cimex pipistrella primarily feed on bats and it is probable that bat feeding species of bug evolved to feed on human blood when our ancesters started dwelling in bat infested caves.

Until the arrival of DDT in the early 20th century bed bugs were common non-paying guests in much low quality dwellings.

The later part of the 20th century has seen pest control companies dealing with very few bed bug calls indeed, their presence being largely restricted to cheap vacation camps and student lodgings etc.

Many people confuse dust mites, which aren’t visible to the naked eye, with bed bugs which very definitely are.

Adult bedbugs are reddy-brown, about a quarter of an inch in size and greatly swollen after a meal of our blood.

They have an incomplete metamorphosis which means that the young are just smaller copies of the adult, they don’t have a pupal stage like fleas or a fly.

Bed bugs typically feed on human blood every 7 – 10 days, coming out in the hours before dawn and sensing their prey by detecting the exhaled carbon dioxide from breath and when close in on their target, infra red body heat.