Bugs In Bed, Bed Bugs Photo, Bed Bug Size and Hotel Bed Bug

It was not too long ago that bed bugs were considered a pest of the past. Recently, however, there seems to be a resurgence of this annoying bug and new efforts are being made to determine the best means of how to kill bed bugs.

The most common bed bug, Cimex lectularius, is the species, which prefers a human host. Other varieties look for wild animals such as bats and birds. These bugs are usually about one quarter of an inch long with an oval shaped body, brown or dark red in color. How to kill bed bugs didn’t become a priority until just a few short years ago when they began making a come back.

There are some relatively easy ways known about how to kill bed bugs, such as washing all clothing in hot water and drying them on the hottest drying cycle. With items, which cannot take the heat, they can be put in the freezer. For larger, bulkier items, such as mattresses, they can be sealed in black plastic and placed in the sun. The gathering heat inside the plastic will kill them. However, his could take up to two weeks and the condition of the materials may dictate they are discarded.

Killing Bed Bugs At The Source

Many questions remain about how to kill bed bugs at the source. Especially since the source may be hard to pin point, it’s helpful to call in an expert. Bed bugs hide in the smallest areas during the day, such as in the tufts of mattresses or behind floor molding. They creep out in the middle of the night, feed on their human hosts, rarely waking them up, and then scuttle back to their nest.

When you wake up covered with bites and left over blood is when you start asking how to kill bed bugs. Low odor chemical treatment is probably the best method, and it’s best left to a professional not just because of the hazardous properties of the chemicals, but for their experience in locating all the places bed bugs hide.

Another method of how to kill bed bugs involves chemicals which render the males sterile, unable to fertilize the females who lay anywhere from 200 to 500 eggs at a time. While this method can be effective, it does take a considerable amount of time. In addition, if the female eggs produce more males, it may not last long enough to get them all.

Author: Christopher W Smith

If you are looking for more information on bed bug bites, please check out http://www.getabettersleep.com Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Christopher_W_Smith

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WASHINGTON — The biggest bedbug outbreak since World War II has sent a collective shudder among apartment dwellers, college students and business travelers across the nation.

The bugs — reddish brown, flat and about the size of a grain of rice — suck human blood. They resist many pesticides and spread quickly in certain mattress-heavy buildings, such as hotels, dormitories and apartment complexes.

Two shelters have closed temporarily in Charlotte, N.C. , because of bedbugs, a Yahoo chat group dedicates itself to sufferers and countless bedbug blogs provide forums for news, tips and commiseration. State inspectors say that more emphasis may be needed to tackle the creatures.

Federal officials have taken notice of the resurgence. Last month, the Environmental Protection Agency held its first-ever bedbug summit, and now a North Carolina congressman wants to take on the insect.

Democratic Rep. G.K. Butterfield just introduced legislation that would authorize $50 million that’s already in the Department of Commerce budget to train health inspectors how to recognize signs of the insects.

The Don’t Let the Bed Bugs Bite Act of 2009 also would require public housing agencies to submit bedbug inspection plans to the federal government. It would add bedbugs to a rodent and cockroach program in the Department of Health and Human Services . It also would require the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to research bedbugs’ impact on public mental health.

Butterfield’s letter to congressional colleagues about the legislation attracted lots of attention: It was topped with a full-color picture of the insect sitting on human skin.

"Unfortunately, in recent years, the United States has seen a resurgence in bedbugs," the letter reads. "That’s right — they’re back in the sack — and biting."

Bedbugs have hit hotels and homes in every state. The creatures are amazing hitchhikers, experts say, and easily travel in suitcases, boxes or packages. They can live for up to a year without food.

Apparently no state has a central reporting system for bedbugs, according to Butterfield’s office, and since the bug carries no known diseases, many health departments don’t consider it a public health threat.

That leaves the critters falling through the cracks among regulators, said Michael Potter , an entomologist at the University of Kentucky and one of the country’s bedbug experts.

"Most health departments say, ‘Hey, we don’t deal with bedbugs,’ " Potter said.

Those who’ve suffered outbreaks say that the anxiety it induces can be debilitating. Potter said many sufferers tossed out furniture and could spend thousands of dollars on repeated treatments from pesticide companies. They call him about anxiety, insomnia, shame and the incessant annoyance of itchy red welts on their skin.

"They’re, like, ready to blow their brains out," Potter said. "It’s emotionally distressing. Anyone that has never had a bedbug problem is not one to judge whether we’re dealing with a medical, emotional public health issue."

In Congress , Butterfield first introduced his bill a year ago after hearing from a constituent who’d brought bedbugs into her home from a hotel trip. The bill died in committee last year, but Butterfield aides say they hope that higher attention will help the measure this year.

The co-sponsors include Reps. Don Young , R- Alaska , Ben Chandler , D- Ky. , Bobby L. Rush , D- Ill. , Betty McCollum , D- Minn. , Corrine Brown , D- Fla. , Steve Cohen , D- Tenn. , Brad Miller , D- N.C. , and Eddie Bernice Johnson , D- Texas .

Butterfield also has received support from the National Pest Management Association , which says that bedbug calls to pest control companies are up 70 percent in the past five years.

Greg Baumann , a Raleigh, N.C. , pest control expert and the vice president of technical services for the National Pest Management Association , said that a decade ago few pest control companies dealt routinely with bedbugs.

"Now it’s everyone today," he said.

Baumann said companies could use pesticides on the bugs but that they also tried such alternatives as extreme heat, freezing and isolating the insects through mattress covers.

Since the EPA restricted the use of several effective pesticides in the 1980s, bedbugs have built resistance to the chemicals that now are on the market, said Potter, the University of Kentucky entomologist. Public education is important, he said, but the industry also needs a good insecticide.

"Whether that bill is going to solve the problem — certainly it’s a start," he said.

 By Barbara Barrett, McClatchy Newspapers Barbara Barrett, Mcclatchy Newspapers – Fri May 15, 5:50 pm ET

Technorati Tags: How to get rid of bed bugs, how to kill bed bugs, treat bed bugs naturally, what causes bed bugs, where do bed bugs come from

Many of us were put to sleep with the saying, ‘good night, sleep tight, don’t let the bed bugs bite’ as children, but have you ever really thought about what bed bugs were? Bed bugs are not as bad as everyone thinks they are, of course.

They don’t carry vicious diseases or imply uncleanliness–bed bugs can be picked up without you ever having to do anything but they are certainly a great deal harder to get rid of than they are to get. Luckily, learning how to kill bedbugs is not hard to do at all, and many of the things that you might have heard about their dogged tenacity to make your life miserable isn’t true at all.

If you want to know the truth about how to eliminate bed bugs, put the mop and bucket down. Contrary to popular belief, bed bugs do not give a care in the world about the cleanliness of their surroundings. They are easily transmitted through clothing, luggage, boxes, and other vehicles from location to location and that is how they survive.

Many people try the approach of just abandoning the premises for a while, in hopes that the bed bugs will be gone when they return but unfortunately they are known to live up to a year without a host to feed off of, so you might have to truly abandon your residence for that tactic to work.

A way to kill bed bugs more easily without having to move out of your home is to completely eliminate them; this can be difficult as these little creatures can hide just about anywhere, from behind the light plate on your wall to under your pillow and mattress, and seal up all cracks and crevices in the home–even the area between the wall and the molding where the floor meets the wall. Sealing up these areas decreases the likelihood of the bed bugs finding a place to lay low until the air clears–literally.

After everything has been sealed and exposed, there are a few methods you can use to get rid of bed bugs but the most practical by far is steam cleaning. Most professional exterminators will use steam cleaners to kill the bugs as they can hardly survive at temperatures above 110 degrees Fahrenheit. The heat kills the bugs, and after that it is just up to you to clean up the remains and make sure you don’t ever have to deal with the bed bug problem ever again.

After the bugs have been killed, the problem is no longer how to kill bed bugs but how to keep them gone. If things are done right, rarely do bed bugs re-surface but it is important to always keep an eye out for them when you are traveling, even if you are staying at the Ritz-Carlton or the Waldorf-Astoria. After all, bed bugs do not discriminate and they have a tendency to travel great distances just to make the lives of human beings a tad bit more trying.

Author: Tim Gorman

Need help detecting and getting rid of bed bugs? Try visiting http://www.howtopreventbedbugs.com, a popular website that provides tips, advice, articles on bed bugs and resources on how to properly kill bed bugs quickly and easily so you can reclaim your bed and get a good night’s sleep. Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Tim_Gorman

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Bed bugs are a particularly nasty type of pest, and are very uncomfortable to share your bed with. Apart from the fact that the thought of sharing your bed with hundreds of small insects isn’t bad enough, their bites can be very frustrating in the morning! It’s vital to get a good sleep, and this is very difficult if you know you’re in a bed with bed bugs.

There are many treatments for bed bugs, and one of the common ones is using high levels of heat or cold to kill them. This is because there has been proof that bed bugs can’t survive extreme temperatures and will be killed by it. But does this really work? And can you do it yourself?

The problem is that for this removal method to work the bedroom needs to be heated up very quickly to stop the bugs moving, and then be kept at that temperature for an extended period of time to make sure all the bugs are killed. This simply isn’t possible in most cases, and its very difficult to isolate one part of the room to for it. You have to heat up the whole room very quickly to a high temperature to kill all the bugs and this is very difficult.

While you can treat small areas of a room with products that heat up quickly, there is no real way to do the same for large items such as bed mattresses and other similar items so this isn’t a recommended way of trying to kill bed bugs.

There are many other methods though, including getting professionals in, that are much more effective at removing bed bugs.

Author: Ryan Maine To find out some great removal of bed bugs that you can do yourself, please visit BedBugsRemovalFAQ.com. Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Ryan_Maine

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