If bedbugs are keeping you from a good nights sleep, your favorite Tulsa pest control company can help you get the rest you deserve. So many different pests can take the quality of our lives. Cockroaches create unsanitary and unhealthy environments. Spiders can be poisonous. Scorpions, bees, and wasps can sting. But bedbugs are some of the most difficult insects to deal with. The psychological toll that they daily exert on many people is excruciating. But you don’t have to live with bedbugs. In this article, let’s take a look at bedbugs, the life cycle, and what we can do to keep them from stealing rest from ourselves, and our loved ones. 

BEDBUGS, BLOOD FEEDERS AND TULSA PEST CONTROL

Bedbugs are blood feeders. These insects feed off the blood of humans, but can be stopped by your Tulsa pest control company. While they can survive on other animals, such as dogs, cats, squirrels, bears, wolves and many other mammals, their main food source is us. The sustenance that they get from the blood that they drink give them the water that they need and the energy to go through their life cycles.

These insects are descendants of the bat bug. When looking at bat bugs and bedbugs side-by-side, these insects look almost identical. In fact, only a trainer entomologist can tell the difference between a bedbug and a bat bug. It’s believed that thousands of years ago, when humans still lived in caves, bat bugs survived on the blood of bats above the sleeping humans. Some of those bat bugs crawled down the side of the walls and start to feed on the humans. And that day the bedbug was born. 

BEDBUGS BEFORE TULSA PEST CONTROL

We have evidence of bedbugs and cave paintings, writings from the Romans, ancient spell books from the Middle Ages, and throughout the rest of our history books. Bedbugs were almost completely extinct back in the 40s. At the time there was the onset of a new pesticide known as DDT. This miracle chemical almost wiped out the entirety of these pests. Unfortunately, it was discovered that DDT caused cancer and its use was discontinued. Since then, the bedbug has been making a resurgence and getting larger in population numbers every single year. Your Tulsa pest control company is here to stop the growing trends of these insects.

Bed bugs use an incomplete metamorphosis. This means that they start their life from an egg. Once the egg hatches, this egg will release a nymph. A nymph is a smaller version of the adult bedbug. These eggs look like small, whitish yellow rice. The nymphs will almost immediately search for a human to feed off of. This will give it the energy to move through the next stages of its lifecycle. Just before it molts, or sheds its skin, it will feed on a human. This gives it the energy to go through the whole process of molting. Before a bedbug gets to full reproductive adulthood, it will molt five times. These five instars will be completed before the nymph becomes a full grown adult.

BEDBUG REPRODUCTION AND TULSA PEST CONTROL

Once the bedbug becomes an adult, the males will seek out the females in an effort to mate. Mating between bedbugs occurs using a process called traumatic insemination. Traumatic insemination is a process by which males will break through the exoskeleton of the female in order to inject their reproductive matter into the female. She has no reproductive openings, so this is the only way that mating can occur. In situations with really high populations, males will overtake the females. These females will flee by climbing up the walls in an effort to get away from the males and their insatiable desire to mate. So if you have a bedbug situation in your home, and you’re seeing bedbugs up high on the walls, this is usually a sign of a pretty heavy infestation.

But how would you know if you had a bedbug infestation? The best way is to contact your Tulsa pest control company. They can do an inspection and find out fairly quickly if you have bedbugs or not. But if you want to look for the signs yourself, they’re pretty common. One of the telltale signs of a bedbug infestation are black and red dots all over your bed covers. If you look at the mattress, seams and sheets that are on the bed, you may find these dots. The red dots are where a bedbug has fed, causing a little bit of blood to fall onto the mattress. The black spots are when the insect defecates after it’s done feeding. Often bedbugs will gather in the creases and seams of the mattress in an effort to hide. You’ll find these black and red dots pretty extensively there.

MORE BEDBUG SIGNS FROM TULSA PEST CONTROL EXPERTS

You can also find the bed bugs them selves. These insects are small, orange and brown insects about the size and shape of an apple seed. Initially they are translucent, but once they feed, they’re usually fat and round and very red. The eggs are also visible as well. These are small, yellowish white eggs that are about the size of a small grain of rice. If you’re seeing any of these signs, it’s time to call in a Tulsa pest control company to help you get rid of these pests.

If you’re pretty certain that you have bedbugs, then it’s time to call in a professional Tulsa pest control company to take care of these insects for you. Here at TermMax Pest Control, we are the best in the business when it comes to dealing with bedbugs, or any other pest. We service the greater Tulsa area, including Broken Arrow, Sand Springs, Coweta, Catoosa, Claremore, Owasso, Turley, Jenks, Bixby, and much more. Call today for a free estimate. We’re here to help!