Bedbugs are pests that can make life miserable. Getting rid of bedbugs can be difficult, so it is better to prevent their appearance in the apartment. Natural questions arise about how they appear in the house, whether bedbugs can be carried on clothes and other objects, or whether they are acquired in other ways.
Small bloodsuckers can appear in any home, no matter how clean and tidy it is maintained. It is a mistake to think that bedbugs only live in the homes of the marginalized or the dirty. They also live in places where garbage is not allowed and they clean up regularly. They do not start on their own, but enter the apartment from the outside.
How do bedbugs get into the house?
There are two options:
- the residents themselves come from their neighbors;
- they are brought by family members in different ways.
Bedbugs need several conditions to live and reproduce: suitable temperature, lack of high humidity, darkness, the opportunity to hide and, of course, a source of food, that is, a person. If your neighbors decide to poison bedbugs, some of them will die, and some will migrate to you. They also come to neighboring living quarters when there are too many of them in the previous one. Infection from neighbors is the most common cause of bedbugs.
Bedbugs do not travel very long distances. They are unlikely to come on their own from another house. But within the same building they migrate. It is often difficult to drive them out, because when there is danger, they go to neighboring apartments or non-residential premises, wait out the threat there, and then return back. This is especially true for old buildings, where bedbug colonies can live for decades despite control.
Question-answer section
Sometimes it is difficult to understand what causes bedbugs in an apartment. A specialist will help you find the cause, and you can ask questions online. Answered by entomologist Irina Igorevna Kireeva, 21 years of experience.
Why do bedbugs migrate to new apartments?
Petrova Irina Igorevna
Entomologist with 24 years of experience
“Insects can move freely around an apartment building through communications (ventilation, through cracks where pipes are installed). This happens due to a lack of food (if there are too many insects) or they become crowded. In addition, parasites flee during large-scale persecution with insecticides.”
Why are there so many bedbugs if there weren’t any recently?
Petrova Irina Igorevna
Entomologist with 24 years of experience
“The reason is the high reproduction rate. Provided they have access to food, insects leave from 5 to 19 eggs per day, less often – no more than 1 egg. After 1-2 weeks, sexually mature offspring appear, which also leave parasite eggs everywhere. For this reason, it is important to understand how bed bugs appear in an apartment in order to avoid their infestation.”
Is a too large colony a bedbug nest?
Petrova Irina Igorevna
Entomologist with 24 years of experience
“Parasites do not establish true nests. They only gather together in hidden areas, leave most of their eggs here, and spend the daytime hours when they do not attack people. Such clusters are called nests, but they do not depend on the number of parasites.”
Why exactly do bedbugs not appear?
Petrova Irina Igorevna
Entomologist with 24 years of experience
“Common myths: the appearance of insects is associated with folk superstitions, negative energy at home and unsanitary conditions. If you are studying the question of where bed bugs come from in an apartment, then the listed factors should be immediately omitted. They are looking at more realistic ones: old furniture, migration from neighbors, etc.”
How bedbugs are brought into a home
But bedbugs are also brought home by household members themselves in one way or another. It is enough to bring a couple of adults or live eggs for the population to quickly increase and take over the house. One fertilization is enough for the female to lay up to five eggs every day throughout her life. That is, the number of bedbugs is growing exponentially.
How to bring bedbugs into the house:
- on furniture - this is the second most common source of infection; This is especially true for used furniture, but you can also get parasites in a sofa or chair from a furniture warehouse;
- on purchased or received as a gift used and new clothes, bed linen, including those in original packaging;
- on suitcases and other types of luggage from hotels or transport;
- on domestic animals - when there are people, bedbugs rarely bite cats and dogs, but they can use them as a vehicle for migration;
- on clothes and shoes, bags used by family members.
Bedbugs prefer clothes in which they can hide. They will not sit on the surface, but will try to hide in folds, seams, folds, pockets of clothing, etc.
Fertilization
Bedbugs reproduce in an interesting way.
This process is painful. So, entomologists call it traumatic insemination. It is carried out through violence, which is not typical for other insects. During the absence of a food source, bedbugs receive food from their own eggs, located in the peritoneum of the female. Therefore, even a surviving queen can give new life to a huge colony.
A female bedbug mates once in her life, which cannot be said about males. They copulate up to 200 times a day. They attack the “newlyweds”, forcibly pierce the body with the genital organ and inject sperm into the abdomen. In terms of gender, they are not picky. They are capable of attacking nymphs, other males and insects not belonging to their species.
When copulating with a male, the released sperm are mixed with the victim's semen. Such indiscriminate attacks continue endlessly until the parasite reaches its target. The alpha male releases a large volume of sperm, but only high-quality sperm is fertilized.
The resulting amount of sperm is enough for the female to last for the rest of her life, remaining in a special zone of the body. Then it is spent evenly, as needed.
To fully understand how fertile bedbugs are, scientists have established the regularity of offspring produced by one female individual - 40-70 larvae per month, most of which survive and turn into adult insects. Against this background, it becomes clear why bedbugs reproduce so intensively in a short period of time.
Where can you get bedbugs on clothes?
Bed bugs can be brought on clothing from a variety of places. Most often these are places of temporary stay - hotels, sanatoriums, hospitals, long-distance transport. Bedbugs do not move long distances. But they can crawl onto items of clothing. Insects are very small and easy to miss.
They can also lay eggs there, which are even smaller in size. This doesn't take much time. It is enough to spend one night in a hotel or spend several hours in a train carriage to bring bedbugs home on your clothes. You can also bring bedbugs on your clothes from regular transport or, for example, from a queue at a government office, where they can crawl from one person to another.
Children who attend kindergartens, hospitals, medical institutions, and children's health camps often bring bedbugs on themselves. There, of course, they monitor sanitary cleanliness, but no one knows in what conditions the other children live, whether they bring bedbugs on their things.
So, there is no 100% guarantee that you won't bring home bedbugs on your clothes, no matter what precautions you take.
Take care of your protection in advance
A prudent person thinks ahead and worries about how not to bring bedbugs home even before the trip. And here's the first piece of advice: don't take the problem lightly. If anyone thinks there is nothing to worry about, then they probably just haven't encountered bed bugs yet. The sharp increase in the number and spread of bed bugs is by no means an exaggeration, but a disappointing reality.
Look online for reviews of the hotel you are planning to stay at. Although you can't completely rely on reviews, if more than one person writes that there were bedbugs in the hotel, this is an alarm bell.
You can also call the hotel in advance, tell the manager of your concerns about bed bugs, and ask what protective measures the hotel is taking. Most likely, they will assure you that there are no problems with bedbugs in the hotel, but you can’t count on honesty in such a matter.
Do bedbugs live in clothes?
These pests try to stay close to humans. They are nocturnal and go hunting when the prey is asleep. The rest of the time they hide in secluded places, but do not go too far from the food source. Most often, they live inside the sleeping area - on the mattress, in bedding and accessories, inside a sofa or chair, on the backs of furniture, behind baseboards next to the bed, or even inside lampshades or picture frames located nearby. If there is a wardrobe or chest of drawers nearby, then they can live there, including on items of clothing. They can live in things for a long time: it’s warm, dry, and from there you can go out hunting at night and remain unnoticed.
Reviews
Marina, 32 years old, south. Moscow
I like the professional treatment method - all the work was completed in 1 day, after which there were no insects in the house.
Varvara, 28 years old, Tambov
I found bedbugs in my bed (on the mattress) when I was changing the sheets at my grandmother's house. It turned out that they had been living here for a long time, and she didn’t even try to fight. I had to do the cleaning first, then I treated the room with Kombat aerosol. I also laid out cotton pads soaked in ammonia everywhere. That helped.
Irina, 24 years old, Tula
I tried to remove insects from myself, it seemed to work. I didn’t see any more traces of them. But I found out that the parasites now live with neighbors, which means they could soon return to me again. I decided to renew the coverings on the floor and walls to close all the cracks, and also wash the floor with vinegar.
Bugs in the closet
What clothes can bedbugs be found on?
Insects can hide on any surface - smooth or textured. But they do not move well on fur or materials with long pile. They can be found on natural and synthetic fabrics - the composition of the material does not matter at all.
If a closet with clothes is infested with bedbugs, they can be seen everywhere - on underwear, pajamas, light shirts or blouses, and outerwear. Bed bugs prefer dark and secluded places, so they try not to stay on the surface, but climb inside: into pockets, into seams, behind lapels. They do not know how to gnaw through fabric, so they hide where they can crawl outside.
The bugs themselves do not spoil clothes, they do not gnaw them, and do not leave marks or snags with their paws. But if you crush a bedbug on fabric, a red or brown bloody stain may remain if the pest has not yet had time to digest the food. There may also be spots from excrement.
Females lay eggs, as if gluing them to the surface with a sticky secretion. Thanks to this, eggs can be located anywhere, including on inclined or vertical surfaces. It’s not always easy to just brush them off; sometimes you have to use a hard brush to do this.
How to understand that they came from a neighboring apartment
If a blood-sucking nuisance exists, homeowners are interested in finding out if neighbors have bedbugs. If there is a trusting relationship, the neighbors will give the answer themselves.
In other cases, a person reconsiders recent events, remembering new purchases, recent trips, and housing transactions.
When wondering how to tell if bed bugs are crawling from your neighbors, look for the presence of pets or recent trips to the hospital. If all the reasons fail, it is more likely that your neighbors have bedbugs. It is important to consider the number of bloodsuckers. If neighbors are poisoning, bed bugs will spread quickly and their numbers will be significant.
What to do if you see a bug on your clothes
As soon as you notice a pest, you should immediately put the item of clothing in a high-temperature wash. It is likely that there may be other parasites or eggs on the garment that may not be noticed due to their small size. To destroy them all, it is better to wash your clothes.
You also need to carefully examine the apartment to understand whether you brought this single bug on your clothes from somewhere or whether there is already a colony of parasites in your house.
First of all, you need to inspect the sleeping area. A bedbug nest can be found under the mattress, on the headboard of the bed, between the sofa cushions. It is also necessary to examine all nearby cabinets, chests of drawers, and cabinets. You can find them behind baseboards, peeling wallpaper and in other secluded places where hundreds of adults and eggs can parasitize. In addition to insects, excrement, pieces of shells and other debris can be seen in the nest. The habitat of bedbugs usually emits an unpleasant odor.
If you find bedbugs, you must immediately begin to fight them. You can call processing specialists or do it yourself. There are product concentrates for this, for example, Ziper, Permifen, Super, Neo from Medilis. Ready-made spray products are very convenient to use, for example, Medilis-superpower for bedbugs. The MediLIS laboratory specially developed this tool to work on resistant populations of bedbugs. Medilis-superpower against bedbugs was tested in real conditions on particularly resistant bedbugs. The test results exceeded all expectations. The motto of this line: “Helps where nothing else helps.” There is no need to treat clothes with insecticides. They are used to spray or wipe furniture and hard surfaces. Processing must be carried out in strict accordance with the instructions and safety precautions must be observed.
Optimal conditions for reproduction
House bugs multiply quickly if optimal conditions for this are created. If external factors are normal, then this shortens the period of development of the egg to an adult. Bed bugs reproduce under the following conditions:
- The room temperature is kept constant and is 20-25 °C.
- Air humidity should be 70%.
- There must be many secluded places to create a nest.
- There should be a food source within a small radius of the nest.
Such conditions are often found in homes, so this is an ideal habitat for bedbugs. If you slightly change the conditions in the room, it becomes possible to destroy insects or slow down their development.
How to remove bedbugs from clothes
Bedbugs can live in clothes for a long time. Getting rid of bedbugs on a person's clothing is quite simple. They absolutely cannot tolerate very low or very high temperatures. The traditional method of controlling bedbugs is freezing. Any items infested with bedbugs should be taken out into the cold. In winter, all windows and doors in houses are opened for this purpose and left overnight. At temperatures below -10 degrees, all parasites and eggs are guaranteed to die. This is impossible to do in the conditions of an apartment in an apartment building. But you can take your clothes out to the open balcony and leave them there for several hours or all night.
Also, bedbugs die at temperatures above +40 degrees. This means you need to treat clothes against bedbugs at this temperature. There are several ways to do this. The easiest one is to wash it. There is no need to add insecticide. Bedbugs will die from exposure to temperature. The powder will wash them off your clothes. This kind of processing is sufficient. To be sure, you can iron the items of clothing with an iron on both sides.
If clothes have been lying in one place for a long time, during which time tens and hundreds of individuals have managed to reproduce on it and make a nest there, then the item needs to be cleaned especially carefully. First, the bedbugs are brushed into a sealed bag and thrown away. Then the item is washed at high temperature, using a stain remover if necessary. After washing, you need to carefully inspect the seams where dead insects or eggs may remain. They need to be removed if they were not washed off with water during washing, and the item should be rinsed again.
Another way is to treat things against bedbugs with a steam generator. This way you can destroy bedbugs even on things that for some reason cannot be washed.
If the clothes cannot be washed or steamed, you can try this method: put the item of clothing in a sealed bag, spray it with insecticide and leave it for several hours. Then shake it very thoroughly, brush it and ventilate well. This method is usually suitable for outerwear with complex elements, zippers, hoods, hats, and shoes. If the item of clothing is in direct contact with the skin, this treatment should not be carried out.
If the apartment is infested with bedbugs, all clothing must be treated. It is taken out from storage places - from cabinets, chests of drawers, cabinets. Furniture must be wiped with insecticides, then washed and dried. Place clothes only in furniture that is clean and treated for bedbugs. Otherwise, the infection will recur.
Rapid reproduction effect
To determine how bedbugs reproduce at such a rate, it is worth considering the effect of rapid reproduction. The linen bug can increase the amount of feeding up to 2 times a week. This means that all stages of development occur faster. At this stage, it is definitely not possible to get rid of parasites. New clutches of eggs may appear every day.
Why do you need to treat clothes for bedbugs?
If you find bedbugs on items of clothing and cannot get rid of them, they will crawl closer to the sleeping areas and will live there, multiply and annoy everyone in the household.
If suddenly you find not an adult bedbug, but an egg on your clothing, treatment is also necessary. No one can guarantee that there are no other parasites in the apartment.
In addition to the question of whether bedbugs can live on clothing, many are also interested in whether bedbugs can bite through clothing. The answer is clear - no. While sleeping, pajamas protect against bedbug bites, but insects bite where the skin is not covered by anything. If the pest is on the fabric, it simply cannot bite through it to get blood. Its mouthparts are not designed for this. The bug pierces the skin and drinks blood from a shallow depth - from capillaries, and not from vessels or veins. It doesn't have teeth to chew anything. Therefore, bedbugs on clothes themselves do not pose a danger. But once they get into a room where there is furniture and other secluded places near a sleeping person, they will move from the clothes there. It will be much more difficult to get them out of bed-bed-sofa than from clothes.
Bedbugs on clothes are not only a way to infect your apartment with bloodsuckers - in this way you transfer the pests further. They can get from your clothes onto the clothes of other people in transport, shops, queues, or just on a bench. They cannot jump, but it is enough to sit next to the source of infection for a while for the insect to simply move on to a new victim. To prevent this from happening, you should periodically inspect your closets and clothes, and if you find bedbugs, immediately begin fighting them. To help in the fight - a line of ready-made or concentrated products for preparing working solutions from the manufacturer MediLIS Laboratories.
Traditional methods
There are folk ways to prevent and expel insects from their homes.
Important! Keep in mind that almost 90% of the “blood-sucking population” lives within a couple of meters of the bedding area.
- Bloodsuckers have a keen sense of smell, so you can use fragrant herbs: calamus, chamomile, peppermint, tansy, wormwood and wild rosemary.
- Insects die at temperatures below 20 and above 60 °C.
- Sometimes it helps to spray with a solution: dilute turpentine, kerosene, liquid soap and warm water in a ratio of 10, 15 and 100 parts, respectively. Be careful, use protective equipment!
Attention! Tansy, wild rosemary and wormwood are poisonous and dangerous for children and animals.
It’s easier, safer and cheaper to turn to the sanitary and epidemiological station for help in exterminating insects: the result will be guaranteed.
Appearance of bloodsuckers
Bedbugs are small insects 3-8 mm in length. Most often they are brown in color - from light to dark. After the blood is pumped, they acquire a reddish tint or turn black. The lifespan of an individual is one year. The female is capable of laying up to 500 eggs and in 40 days many new specimens hatch from them.
If there is a shortage of food, they can hibernate and emerge from it when favorable conditions arise. When the temperature drops to minus 15, the insect dies. The bug emits a characteristic odor when crushed.
What is the danger for children and pregnant women
The presence of a large number of insects in the house can lead to the development of various phobias, to which children are especially susceptible. The thought that there is a bedbug somewhere nearby can cause psychological problems and cause insomnia. If the situation does not change for a long time, chronic fatigue and symptoms of severe stress appear.
Danger for children and pregnant women.
The main reasons why bedbugs cause more harm to children than adults:
- A child is more likely to become a victim of bites because he has thinner skin, so he is preferable to insects as a victim.
- Incompletely developed immunity causes a high risk of contracting an infectious disease.
- An adult can drink up to 3 g of blood on average. If there are a lot of parasites, then this amount of blood loss is significant for the child, and symptoms of anemia are noticeable.
Danger for pregnant women:
- Decreased immunity due to sleepless nights.
- Irritability that occurs due to discomfort caused by bites.
- The possibility of becoming infected with a vector-borne disease and subsequently passing it on to a child.
Features of the use of chemical insecticides
The industry produces a variety of products against blood-sucking insects. Fabrics can be treated with aerosols Karbozol, Perfos-P, Raptor, Raid, Clean House, Combat.
When using them you need to follow some rules:
- Carry out processing away from food, it is better to do it on the street or balcony.
- It is advisable to wear a mask to protect your respiratory tract before spraying clothing.
- After the effect of the drug wears off (see instructions), wash the treated item if possible.
The bug is a creature that multiplies quickly and is surprisingly tenacious, so treatment to destroy it must be carried out as carefully as possible and at the first detection. Today we answered the following questions: do bedbugs live in clothes and how to get them out of there?
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