This list of practical and useful things to know about Bed Bugs was written specifically with the many Bed Bug victims, hospitality professionals, property management professionals and pest management professionals in mind. Please note that these bits of information were gleaned from years of first hand field experience in dealing with Bed Bugs and working with industry colleagues across the country. They are present to you the reader in an effort to assist you with your Bed Bug concerns.

� Except for the egg, all stages of Bed Bugs from nymphs to adults feed on blood.

� Bed Bugs can last a long time without feeding. Some references indicate Bed Bugs can survive about one year without feeding under ideal conditions. Of course when dealing with live entities and longevity is based upon local conditions. As such, your situation may vary.

� Some experts point out that, if necessary, Bed Bugs can get a blood meal from other Bed Bugs. While this may be a rare occurrence, it is possible and it underscores the tenacity of this troublesome pest.

� Do not underestimate them; Bed Bugs take a lot of knowledge, experience time & effort to deal with successfully. You need to keep a heightened level of vigilance to assure you are properly prepared to detect and deal with Bed Bugs.

� Generally speaking, Bed Bugs can not climb smooth surfaces such as glass, some plastics and other such surfaces. In a Bed Bug video session conducted recently we witnessed an adult Bed Bug successfully scale a one cup Pyrex glass bowl not once, but twice. Subsequent inspection of the bowl under magnification revealed that the bowl was slightly dirty and there were small ridges in the glass. As such, be sure your pitfall type traps are clean and suitably smooth. Additionally, place a small amount of a suitable dust/powder such as talc as this will help to prevent Bed Bug escape.

� The adult Bed Bug �ground speed� on smooth poster board is from about three to four feet per minute. This means that a determined Bed Bug, if a Bed Bug can be characterized as �determined�, can cover a significant distance, up to twenty feet in just five minutes, if need be to seek out a host while we�re sleeping.

� Generally speaking, Bed Bugs can survive cold temperatures very well but succumb to heat rather easily. Recent industry literature sights temperatures of as low as about 113 degrees Fahrenheit for about 30 minutes is sufficient to kill Bed Bugs. Industry references and publications indicate a variety of temperatures and duration times to achieve mortality. It is likely best to be conservative to assure you achieve the desired results.

� Bed Bug eggs are tiny. Eggs and first instar nymphs are only about one millimeter long, that's only about 1/32nd of an inch.

� Bed Bug eggs are coated with a sticky substance. Female Bed Bugs glue their eggs to hidden areas which can make them difficult to find and difficult to remove 100% of them, if any, using a vacuum.

� Bed Bug eggs are shaped cylindrical and oval like, rounded at one end with a round flat hatch shape at the opposite end. The round flat end opens like a "round hatch top" when the immature Bed Bug immature emerges.

� Bed Bug eggs are a shiny, translucent and a pearly white color as are the newly hatched Bed Bug nymphs.

� Prior to taking their initial blood meal immature Bed Bugs are translucent and may appear slightly yellowish. Once engorged after a blood meal they take on their reddish color. However, just like your mileage, individual Bed Bug color may vary.

� Immature Bed Bugs maintain their reddish color for as long as they have remnants of their blood meal within their gut. As the blood meal is digested over time they become more and more translucent again.

� It may take several weeks for an immature Bed Bug to fully digest a blood meal such that no blood matter appears within the abdomen.

� Hatched Bed Bug eggs appear hollow and may have their �hatch top� opened and attached like a pop top or missing.

� As are the eggs, newly emerged/hatched immature Bed Bugs are equally small and difficult to see.

� Newly hatched Bed Bugs are translucent, may appear shiny and milky white to slightly yellowish in color making them difficult to see on light color mattress, bedding materials and other such surfaces.

� Bed Bug eggs can be about the same size as one stitch of sewn mattress fabric.

� Much like mosquitoes, Bed Bugs suck blood from their host victims. These blood meals are sucked in through the piercing sucking mouthparts at the "north end" and later on are expelled out the �south end� as a dark ink like appearing fecal liquid.

� Reportedly alcohol, such as rubbing alcohol, kills Bed Bugs on contact.

� At the time of this writing there are no university research proven Bed Bug repellent products currently available.

� There are no effective university research proven "sonic electronic" type repelling devices to rid your dwelling of Bed Bugs currently available at the time of this writing. However, this doesn�t prevent the consuming public from buying a surprising number of these sonic pest repelling devices each year.

� Bed Bug eggs hatch in about three to five days depending upon a number of factors, including temperature and resource availability. Again, your mileage may vary.

� Generally speaking, Bed Bugs spend most of their time hiding.

� Bed Bugs prefer to hide in undisturbed areas.

� When viewed from the side, Bed Bugs are built rather flat and adult Bed Bugs can be thinner than the thickness of a normal business card.

� It's a "wives tale" that Bed Bugs "bite in a line" or "along a vein". Bed Bug bites appear to be in a line because of where the Bed Bug or Bed Bugs were located at when they bit the victim such as along the area where the victim's body was laying on the bed. Bed Bugs resting on the mattress, sheet or other surface where the host�s body contacts that surface may then appear to have bitten in a line.

� It seems that Bed Bugs do not bite where the body is covered by clothing or pajamas however, it is possible for Bed Bugs to crawl underneath loose fitting garments.

� Adult Bed Bugs are about 3/8 of an inch long by about 3/16 inch wide, your mileage may vary.

� As a snake does, Bed Bugs must molt or shed their skin to grow to the next stage of development ( entomologists call these stages an �instar� ) until they become adults. These shed skins are found in Bed Bug harborages and can be a tell tale sign of the presence of Bed Bugs.

� Bed Bugs must have a blood meal to molt or grow to the next instar or stage of development. If you find multi stages of Bed Bug development at our location along with the typical fecal staining present, guess what, that�s your blood!

� Bed Bugs go through five instars to become adults. This means an adult Bed Bug in your house may have fed upon you, your guests or your family members at least five times if it started off there as first instar immature.

� There are no "albino Bed Bugs" ( nor are their albino cockroaches either ). Bed Bugs may appear light in color after molting and get their dark rusty red color after feeding or taking a blood meal.

� A Bed Bug's abdomen ( the hind end area ) grows many times its original size as it takes in your blood. Just check out one of the popular Bed Bug feeding videos now widely available online.

� Based on their size, Bed Bugs are capable of hiding nearly anywhere within a hotel room, apartment, dorm room, home or any such place.

� Where do Bed Bugs come from? The short answer is mommy & daddy Bed Bugs. However, people get Bed Bugs from being at places where Bed Bugs are.

� Depending upon your perspective, generally speaking Bed Bugs are a "people problem". They are not a �building problem�. However, if you�re the neighbor of someone who brought Bed Bugs into your building, your perspective is probably and understandably different.

� What do Bed Bug bites look like? People may react to Bed Bugs bites differently and the bites may appear differently on different people. Generally speaking, Bed Bug bites appear as raised reddened bumps on the skin that are usually itchy. There are photos of Bed Bug bites available for view online.

� Can I feel the Bed Bugs bite me? It's doubtful that you will. Bed Bugs make their living by being "stealthy". That is, they need to sneak in, find a suitable place to bite, stick in their piercing mouthparts, suck your blood and sneak away. If you could feel them do this, you'd wake up and simply squish the Bed Bug. Like mosquitoes, Bed Bugs inject an anti-coagulant and an anesthetic so you won�t feel the bite and the blood flows.

� While Bed Bugs are commonly active at night, they will feed in the daytime if their host happens to be a night shift type worker or a person who maintains such hours. At the end of the day, these are tiny animals and their behavior can vary as individuals or local circumstances dictate.

� Some people may be bitten over extended periods of time without knowing that they are being bitten. In extreme cases we�ve seen people experiencing Bed Bug bites for over a year without them or their medical doctors being able to identify that they in fact have Bed Bugs.

� My husband isn't being bitten and thinks that "it's all in my head" and that there are no Bed Bugs. Is this so, am I crazy? - From time to time the lady of the house asks this question and at one home the husband was really tough on his wife regarding her suspicion of Bed Bugs in their home. After inspecting his recliner I advised her to ask him why we were able to find six �well fed� Bed Bugs in his Lazy Boy and who�s blood was in them. Your husband may be being bitten but may be one of those people who just doesn't react noticeably nor suffers any itchiness from Bed Bug bites. Again, your mileage may vary.

� Won't my doctor be able to tell if I have Bed Bug bites? Your medical doctors or dermatologist may not know about Bed Bugs. Medical doctors may have not been trained in medical entomology and, even at best, insect bites can be difficult to detect or diagnose accurately. We once had a woman who was an intensive care nurse who had experienced Bed Bugs for nearly two years before she discovered that she, in fact, had a Bed Bug problem. This woman had been to her general practitioner and was later referred to a dermatologist. She had received prescriptions and treatments for dry skin, psoriasis, seborrhea dermatitis, scabies and other skin related maladies over the course of those many months when her actual problem was Bed Bugs.

� How bad can Bed Bugs get in a hotel, home or apartment? The worst I�ve seen is an apartment with a sole occupant who was a retired man in his seventies. The apartment was sparsely furnished with just a bed, table with four chairs, and an upholstered chair in front of a television set on a plastic milk crate. There had to be over ten thousand Bed Bugs in this apartment. I visited this apartment the day after one of my clients performed a Bed Bug treatment there for the follow up inspection. Dead Bed Bugs were mounded like drifted snow in the tracks of the sliding glass door leading to the terrace. Mounds of dead Bed Bugs were in every corner of every room, along all the floor wall junctions and the walls were covered with fecal stains. The last surviving few Bed Bugs were found along the crown moldings. While the application work was very successful, there were still live Bed Bugs present and follow up treatments were scheduled. Within about 72 hours this person was moved out, the apartment was rendered Bed Bug free and totally renovated. Interestingly enough, when I asked this man if he had been bitten by Bed Bugs he replied that he wasn�t and that he had never been bitten in the six months that he had lived in this apartment. It was clear that this person was suffering from mental health related conditions as well as severe Bed Bug problems. In a hotel I�ve been to locations where up to about 75% of the rooms were infested.

� What�s the worst Bed Bug situation? Well, I suppose that the answer depends on how we define the word worst. My tendency is to equate worst with gross. Some of the situations that top out the gross-o-meter include: Bed Bugs living within an artificial leg and Bed Bugs harboring within a person�s wig while they were wearing it. However, the worst situation, at least to me, has to be all life stages of Bed Bugs from egg to adult harboring within the folds of skin of a non-ambulatory obese person at a nursing home.

� Bed Bugs are tough adversaries. Just like a very good team exposes the weaknesses of their opponents, Bed Bugs will expose the flaws in a poorly designed or poorly implemented Bed Bug program.

� Where can I find reliable information about Bed Bugs? There is a lot of good information available online. Generally, I recommend that folks review the information found on unbiased web sites including university based web sites, medical school websites and others. You can do a search on Bed Bugs and find many references to learn more about Bed Bugs. The more you know, the better able you are to make good decisions.

� Bed Bug fecal stains on walls and other such surfaces will �run� when sprayed with water or spray cleaners.

� Bed Bugs crawl at about the same speed as argentine ants or odorous house ants ( about 1/8th inch ants commonly found trailing into homes & buildings in many areas of the US ) . As mentioned previously, we found an adult Bed Bug is capable of traveling at from three to four feet per minute when crawling across common poster board.

� There are many Bed Bug videos that can be seen online if you do a proper search.

� Two years ago Bayer Environmental Science produced an excellent Bed Bug training video on DVD featuring Dr. Austin M. Frishman and Joe Barile. Check with your local distributor or Bayer representative to get a copy of this video.

� There are many folks working behind the scenes in the pest management industry on new Bed Bug products and techniques, stay tuned for new tools, techniques and solutions that become available.

� Bed Bug eggs are glued in place and Bed Bugs can hold on surprisingly well opposite a vacuum. Based on field experience it is doubtful that a significant amount of eggs would be successfully removed via vacuuming. However, it is beneficial to use a vacuum to remove as many crawling Bed Bugs as possible as part of your Bed Bug management program.

� It�s possible, and it has been happening, for service personnel to take Bed Bugs home with them from work.

� It�s possible for Bed Bug cross contamination to occur where Bed Bugs are brought to non-infested locations by service technicians who service Bed Bug infested accounts.

� Companies dealing with Bed Bugs on a regular basis should have policies and procedures in place that address the prevention of cross contamination.

� Cross contamination may occur from a variety of sources including housekeeping, maintenance, deliveries and other service providers.

� I had Bed Bugs on my bed, do I need to throw out my mattress and box spring? I�m often asked this question. The truth is that it is not entirely necessary to throw away your mattress simply because you had Bed Bugs. And, there are other factors that need to be considered. If your mattress is in good condition, has years of useful life remaining and has been successfully rendered Bed Bug free by your Bed Bug service provider then there is no need to discard an otherwise useful mattress. However, if you have doubts about your mattress and/or box spring still harboring Bed Bugs you can purchase and install good quality Bed Bug proof mattress encasement like those manufactured by Mattress Safe. High quality mattress encasements have been tested to be Bed Bug proof. That is Bed Bugs can not enter, escape or bite through these encasements. As such, even if your Bed Bug service provider missed a Bed Bug or any Bed Bug eggs, any such Bed Bugs left behind will nt be able to escape the encasement.

� Can I bring Bed Bugs home from work with me? Yes you can and people have done so. However, let�s not panic about it. Bringing Bed Bugs home from work is dependent upon many factors including but not limited to: if there are actually Bed Bugs present at your work place, what type of place you work at, the type of operation and practices utilized at your place of employment and what prevention methodologies, if any, are being utilized. If this is a concern refer to some of the prevention tips listed elsewhere below.

By: Paul J. Bello, PJB Pest Management Consulting, LLC.