QUESTION:

How long will it take for bed bugs to reach maturity? I have a customer who thinks the bed bugs in her home were there before she moved in. She has had her current bed for 15 years, so in your opinion which came first, her or the bed bugs?

ANSWER:

This is an interesting question, but let's get the basic biology of bed bugs out of the way first. Once deposited on a surface a bed bug egg will hatch within 7-10 days, depending on the temperature. A female bed bug deposits from 5 to 15 eggs each week, again depending on the conditions in the room, and can lay 200 to 500 eggs total over her lifetime of 6-18 months. Typically the new bed bug nymphs will become adult bed bugs in about 2 months, although this again varies from 1 month to 4 months depending on the temperature in their environment. There are 5 nymph stages and then the adult stage, and each nymph feeds at least once on blood and the adult may feed every week for its lifetime, which typically is about 6 months but may extend to well over a year, particularly if blood is not readily available. In a cool environment an adult female bed bug has been shown to be capable of surviving 425 days without finding a second blood meal. We are not going to starve these parasites out of our homes.

Bottom line is that temperature has a huge effect on the lives of bed bugs, and the warmer it is the faster they develop and the sooner they die. If this home is normal and lived in then we could expect freshly deposited bed bug eggs to become mature adult bed bugs in about 45 to 60 days. The female is sexually mature essentially the moment she molts to the adult stage, and will be inseminated as soon as a male discovers this new opportunity.

How does all this help you with your predicament? Part of the problem is the "Placing of the Blame" game. This customer appears determined to blame the previous owners for her current bed bug problem. Somehow I think this would be a serious stretch. If she moved in 15 years ago that puts her moving in date at the year 1996, and frankly, we still found The Common Bed Bug to be almost non-existent in the U.S. in those days. Is it "possible" bed bugs were already there? Well, certainly it's possible, but it would seem to be highly unlikely, and even more so if she is only now complaining about their presence. I am going to go out on a limb here and guess that she may be renting this home, and therefore would have the actual owner to blame for the problems she now has. After 15 years though it would seem more likely to me that she has recently brought these pests into her home herself.

The subject of her 15 year old bed may not be that important though, with respect to the bugs. They can hide nearly anywhere within an infested room. The bed and all its seams and crevices may be a preferred harborage site for these bugs, but bed framing and nearby dressers, along with carpet edging, electronic devices, and wall voids are quite suitable too. Of course, people who buy used mattresses or get them free at garage sales may be asking for more trouble than the person who buys a bed new, but even an infested bed can be dealt with the eliminate the bugs and prevent them from hiding on the mattress in the future.

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