Furniture bugs (they are bed)

Furniture bugs are just one of the popular names for bed bugs, unpleasant parasites, which spoil the quality of human life and can turn even the most well-groomed apartment into a habitable place.

From the appearance of these blood-sucking insects not a single room, even the newest and cleanest, is insured. And the very common name “furniture” was given to insects because most often they settle down as close as possible to the victim - in sofas and beds.

As can be seen in the photo, furniture bugs have a very small size of the body - from 3 mm in a hungry condition to 8 mm in the full:

However, they are able to deliver a lot of trouble to a person, feeding on his blood at night and leaving itchy wounds.

Laying eggs of furniture bugs can most often be found under the bed, as well as in other dark secluded places - behind cabinets, paintings, under the window sill.The photo shows a typical laying of eggs of bugs in furniture:

 

The appearance of the bug and its differences from other domestic insects

The bedbug has a flattened body and a dark color - from dirty yellow to dark brown. A special proboscis (see the photo) departs from the head from the front, which is divided into two separate channels: wider for blood absorption, and narrower for releasing saliva into the wound. This proboscis is essentially an elongated jaw of an insect that has turned into a specialized instrument for feeding with blood:

Bedbugs have special glands on the back surface. These glands secrete a special secret that produces the odor characteristic of bedbugs. The same glands have larvae.

To identify traces of bedbugs on furniture and find their clutch, you need to imagine what eggs and larvae of parasites look like.

Bedbug eggs curved and oblong, whitish in color. At one end is a cap. The larvae of them can hatch in a few days or almost a month. It all depends on the environmental conditions, their comfort. It’s easy to recognize that the eggs were left by the furniture bug: usually the eggs are in the places where the bugs accumulate,among the excrement and skins from the hopper of larvae (see photo):

Bedbug larvae look almost the same as adults. They are distinguished only by a smaller size and a lighter color. They also feed on blood, but do not yet have a special substance in the saliva that adult bugs have. Therefore, the larva bite is painful and can be felt immediately.

The photos below show the larvae of bugs of different ages:

The photo of an adult individual shows that the furniture bug is not at all like other domestic insects, such as cockroaches or fleas. He has no wings, and on the abdomen, you can clearly track the segments. The bug seems to be divided by transverse stripes:

Unlike the bug, the flea has longer limbs, and its upper chitinous cover is provided with tendrils and a kind of thorns. The flea larva is very different from the adult, has a worm-like appearance without limbs.

To distinguish the bug from the cockroach is also quite simple. The cockroach has wings, it has a more oblong body, with long antennae on its head. In addition, at the end of the trunk cockroaches are elongated outgrowths, which are not the case with bedbugs.

Often, people confuse ticks and bedbugs, which is not surprising, because there is still some similarity between them. Ticks are usually very small in size (up to 1 mm), but they increase as food is eaten. But at the same time, ticks belong to the class of Arachnids, therefore they have 8 legs. In bedbugs, like in other insects, legs 6. You can see the differences in the photo:

 

How furniture bugs infect an apartment, how to multiply and bite

Unfortunately, to prevent the appearance of bedbugs in the house is 100% almost impossible, since these insects settle even in clean and well-kept rooms. They penetrate the room in different ways:

• moving from the neighboring apartments - for this an adult bug will need one night from strength
• They fall with furniture, usually - old, but sometimes - and only collected. There are cases when bugs penetrated into an apartment in Ikeevskaya furniture. But it is rather an exception.
• Penetrate with visitors to the premises - guests, workers, lodgers.
• Fall on clothes. The owner of the apartment is enough to spend the night in an infected hotel or train and bring home one female in a shirt pocket or on the toe, and in a few months the apartment will turn into a klopovnik.
• They penetrate with small animals - rodents and birds, from which they can also drink blood.

After getting into an apartment, bugs usually settle in sofas, beds, wardrobes, and behind plinths. Bugs in furniture usually settle in places where the furniture itself has many slots and holes.

The furniture bug actively reproduces, and the larvae can stay without food for a long time and remain viable.

For mating, bedbugs use a traumatic insemination method, in which the male pierces the integument of the female’s body with his sexual organ and introduces semen into the designated organs specifically for this purpose. The photo below shows this process:

On a note

This method of insemination is peculiar only to bed bugs. Moreover, it was thanks to him that insects had a unique Berleze organ, in which the female retains the male's sex products.

It is noteworthy that germ cells can persist for a long time in the body of the female and go out only when conditions are best. Throughout her life, the female bug can lay up to 500 eggs.

Furniture bugs are mainly nocturnal, and spend the day in shelters.At night, they crawl out of the shelter, find open areas of the human body and actively feed. The photo below shows the bug larva drinking blood:

The bedbug senses the locations of the capillaries due to the jolts of the blood, therefore it immediately introduces the proboscis into the blood vessel. At the same time as feeding, the insect injects a dose of an anesthetic that prevents a person from waking from a bite.

Then the parasite moves on and makes a few more bites. After such a night hunt, a bug for about 8 days will digest food that is twice as large as its own weight.

It is worth noting that the larvae of bedbugs need to eat much more often, sometimes they do this every night.

In the photo you can consider in more detail how a furniture bug bites a person:

 

How to deal with furniture bugs

Getting rid of furniture bugs is quite a laborious, but solvable task. Due to its small size and ability to hide in hard to reach places, bugs are poorly amenable to mechanical destruction.

The most common insecticides for home use. They can be produced self-destruction of bedbugs and quite effective.However, this requires some preparation of the apartment and at least one day of work.

No less effective call disinfestation services. Experts usually know a lot of the subtleties of dealing with furniture bugs, and therefore their work is usually more reliable. But at the same time - and more expensive.

There are also popular methods of combating parasites:

• freezing of the room. Bedbugs are afraid of low temperatures and therefore many people try to carry furniture outside (or on the balcony) in the winter. Unfortunately, this method is ineffective, because bugs are dying at a temperature of about minus 22 degrees Celsius. Most often, bedbugs simply hibernate, and when they return to heat they come to life. Use this method can only residents of the northern regions of the country.
• Evaporation of insects. Furniture bugs and their larvae die at temperatures above 50 degrees. However, it is inconvenient to water the furniture with boiling water, and steam condenses on the surface and usually does not reach the cracks with eggs.

Typically, folk remedies help only to reduce the number of bugs in the house, but to completely destroy them will not help. Therefore, in 90% of cases, apartment owners prefer the use of chemicalinsecticides.

 

Preparations for the destruction of furniture bugs

Most modern tools fight bedbugs very effective, to some extent safe for humans and able to destroy insects in just a few hours.

Among such tools, we note the following:

• Hangman - a concentrated drug that must be dissolved in water before use. It is of low toxicity to people and animals, however, for safety reasons, it is necessary to temporarily remove all residents and pets from the premises. The active ingredient of the Executioner decomposes in fresh air, so the treatment is carried out with the windows closed.
• The insecticide is produced in the form of a spray, is very economical and effective. One bottle is enough to handle a large three-room apartment. This drug is quite toxic and requires strict adherence to safety measures.
• Karbofos - is used to kill not only bugs, but also garden pests. The tool is moderately active, but it should be used with caution - to isolate people and animals, use personal protective equipment. It effectively destroys both eggs with larvae and adults.
• Fufanon - a drug in the form of a concentrate that should be diluted with water. Processing is also carried out with extreme caution, insects die within 1 day.
• Mashenka - the drug is produced in the form of chalk and is very convenient for use, low toxic. Masha needs to handle the places of the supposed nests and insect movements. Well proven in the fight against bed bugs.

Fighting bedbugs can be long and difficult, especially in advanced cases. Therefore, it is very important not to allow the mass resettlement of insects in the apartment, proceeding to their destruction as soon as possible.

If the whole house is inhabited by parasites, you need to interact with your neighbors and carry out comprehensive measures - to cause an exterminator or poison bugs together.

In order to prevent penetration bed bugs in the apartment, periodically treat potentially hazardous places (around windows, window sills, walls near the vent) with insecticides.

Remember: to prevent the appearance of parasites is much easier than to destroy them in the future.

 

What are the domestic bugs and how to identify their presence in the apartment

 

Interesting video: how the bugs look and how they bite