In the summertime, it can be easy to forget about bed bugs. The sun is out, the beach is calling, and there’s plenty of other things to worry about. But hurricane season is coming to a worryingly active end, and it’s time to look forward. While the seasons will cull some of our other pest issues, bed bugs are year-round. And that’s why today we’ll be talking about St Pete Bed Bugs, and how you can control their numbers and recognize an infestation.
St Pete Bed Bugs: Overview
If you’re like me, the idea of ANY bug drinking your blood is a scary one. Unfortunately, though, there are more than one species of blood-sucking pest out there. So to make sure we’re not dealing with something like fleas or ticks, we’ll start by going over what exactly a bed bug looks like.
Bed Bugs: Appearance
When you get a good look at these guys, they’re pretty distinct. I can see confusing them with a tick, but there’s enough of a difference that you shouldn’t with a good look. The only identical pests to these are bat bugs, but those are rare infesters of humans.
To begin, bed bugs are similar to an apple seed in size, making them immediately more noticeable than fleas. They’re longer and less flat than ticks, unless they’ve recently fed, and are generally oval-shaped. Bed bugs also tend to be brown to reddish-brown in color. If they have recently fed, though, they can be much larger in size and redder in coloration thanks to having eaten so much of your blood.
Bed bugs are also closer to “true bugs” than most other parasites. They have a beak, a segmented body, multi-segment antenna, and wings that are mostly useless. They also smell, with a sickly-sweet and musty odor that’s produced from glands on the undersides of their body. Nymphs look slightly different from grown adults. They’re also much harder to see. But they can range from translucent white to yellow in color, and be nearly invisible to the naked eye.
And finally, if you see their eggs somehow that’s also a good sign of infestation. They’re tiny, as small as a pinhead, and pearly white in color. If they’re more than five days old, they’ll also be marked by an eyespot.
Bed Bug Life Cycle
St Pete Bed bugs go through a life cycle beginning at the eggs that I mentioned above. Females of this species lay between a single and five eggs every day. In fact, if they live long enough, five hundred or more isn’t unheard of. The eggs are laid in clusters and placed in cracks or tight crevices by the mother. Within a two-week time frame, the eggs hatch into immature bed bugs, and feeding begins immediately.
Young bed bugs, or Nymphs, go through five stages of molting before becoming adults. They appear similar in shape to adults but are much smaller and not sexually mature. Young nymphs are also yellow-white in color, while older nymphs and adults are reddish-brown. In order to complete a molting stage, each nymph requires a blood meal. At room temperature, nymphs molt and become adults within five weeks.
They then mature into adults, who feed roughly once or twice a week. The life span of these adults mostly ranges about half a year in length, though in cool conditions it’s said that they can survive for up to a year.
St Pete Bed Bugs: Infestation Signs
The first thing you’re going to want to do if you don’t straight up to see a bed bug is a search for other signs of infestation. A good place to start, obviously, is your bed. Bed bugs tend to live in mattresses, box springs, headboards, and even bed frames. But if you only see one or two, don’t think that means you just picked up a few stragglers and should be okay. Remember, not only are they fast breeders, but two-bed bugs can lead to hundreds more. These pests also don’t always mass together and are spread out across an entire mattress, headboard, etc.
Also, look for things like fecal spots or blood. Bed bugs feed for approximately three to ten minutes before they retreat. And thanks to the anti-clotting agents in your blood, if you toss and turn at all you could end up with quite a few little pinpricks of blood on the sheets that would hint they may have been there. As for their poop, to us, it appears as small black specks about the size of a marker dot. It’s black because it’s our digested blood.
But make sure not to forget, bed bugs can live basically anywhere that has a place for them to hide. So, make sure to check your carpet too. Specifically around the edges. And it doesn’t matter if it’s tight or loose careening either. Both provide the privacy and seclusion St Pete bed bugs need to reproduce. If you can do so without damaging your floors, pull up the edge of the carpet and grab a magnifying glass to search for them.
Finally, check your closet. Bed bugs love to live in shirt fabrics just as much as carpet. The closet also provides seclusion, temperature control, and easy enough access to your blood. This goes similarly for the dresser as well. Just grab your clothes and check for bugs, blood spots, and fecal marks.
Bite Marks
Another early tell is a bite mark. So if you’re waking up with an excess of bites around exposed skin, especially the ankle/feet area, that may be another good sign of the infestation.
What can I do about an infestation of St Pete Bed Bugs?
If you have an infestation of St Pete bed bugs, don’t wait to act. This is a pest that is beyond the scope of simply cleaning up and waiting for them to move out. Do your best to contact a licensed pro as quickly as possible. Especially one that uses natural methods of pest control, as chemical insecticides have proven dangerous to humans, property, and pets time and time again.
