I love my bed so much but when it comes to an insect with the prefix bed-, it is a complete different story. I do not like bedbugs at all so when they use the phrase "Good Night, Sleep Tight, don't let the bedbugs bite", it is very disgusting for me because it is very difficult to know when they bite.
I went to visit a friend last year November and when I got there, they were hospitable. I was given all the care I could receive from them and we had fun but everything changed when I was taken to a room and when I was tying to settle in, I saw a bedbug. Asides from the fact that it bites and suck on the blood of humans, its pungent smell is very annoying for me. I immediately asked politely to be lodged in a hotel.
I couldn't tell him immediately that I was leaving because of bed bug because it will sound like I was a bad guest but I did spill the beans after 2 days of staying in the hotel. This led him to burn the entire bed and do a complete fumigation of the area as well as change his furniture. Even after that, I am still not certain I will want to sit on the chair in the house.
Cimex lectularius commonly known as bed bug is lured in by our breath and they come to bite us when we are most vulnerable. Unlike Mosquitoes that will bite and suck either when a person is awake or asleep, bed bugs will suck when a person is asleep. That insect is very fast because you will not feel it moreover you are in dreamland. Once they finish sucking, they rush to hide at the edge of the mattress or in a close place where there is plywood, or they find their way in the middle of your chair where they begin the process of growing a family.
Once they begin reproduction, they produce the Eggs which have a casing, after which a Nymph is hatched out. You see, the annoying thing about bed bugs is their feces which are digested blood that were excreted. They suck until they are adult and they keep sucking until they reproduce again. Funny enough, they are so patient that they can wait for us in our cloths and follow us everywhere we are going to until we spread them to other regions.
In the 1950s, Dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane(DDT) was used to combat them but over time, they started to grow resistance to the pesticide. They can be killed with insecticides but they are very good at hiding. Beans plant have become a very effective bed bug trap such as kidney beans and green beans.
This is because they possess trichomes which are tiny hairlike structures that can incapacitate the bed bugs. People of Balkans first learned this thing and used the leaves as traps for bedbugs as they put the leaves around their beds. The Trichomes pairs through the bedbug feet and this destroy their joints that are soft.
In the quest to protect themselves against aphids and other plant eating insects, bean plants developed the trichomes that help them to catch bed bugs. With this development, scientists are working on creating a synthetic substance that will be able to possess something similar to the Trichomes that will help to capture and incapacitate bedbugs.
https://www.epa.gov/ingredients-used-pesticide-products/ddt-brief-history-and-status
https://npic.orst.edu/factsheets/bb-ddt.html
https://www.epa.gov/bedbugs/how-find-bed-bugs
https://www.epa.gov/bedbugs/bed-bugs-appearance-and-life-cycle
https://www.epa.gov/bedbugs/do-it-yourself-bed-bug-control
https://www.vdacs.virginia.gov/pdf/bb-biology1.pdf
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3645427/
