Bed bug – Conservapedia | World, Bed Bug Registry Map

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A Bed bug is any of approximately 75 species of a small parasitical insect of the family Cimicidae, particularly the common bed bug (Cimex lectularius) of the temperate areas of the northern hemisphere. Bed bugs are an ectoparasite, characterized by the nocturnal feeding of blood from man or warm-blooded animals.

Bed bugs are approximately a fifth to a quarter of an inch (4-5 millimeters) long. They are broad and flat in shape, brown in color, and glisten from a distinctive, smelly oil secreted from scent glands. The wings are scale-like and vestigial. Females lay about 200 or more eggs during reproductive periods, and can lay around a thousand during several such periods within a year.

Bed bugs feed chiefly at night;[1] in the wild they feed on the blood of birds and small mammals, and within human-inhabited areas they feed upon domesticated animals as well as man. They retreat to their hiding places during the daytime, using up to several days in which to digest their food.[2] Most bed bugs live full time within eight feet of where humans sleep. When hiding they are generally found in bedding and mattresses (hence the name), nearby furniture, carpeting, within dressers and clothes, curtains, and cushions.

Bed bugs have been plaguing humans since ancient times. Aristophanes wrote The Clouds in 423 B.C. referring to bed bugs living in a couch. Eva Panagiotakopulu, a University of Sheffield archaeologist, found that bed bugs have lived with man for at least 3500 years. [3]

Bed bugs spread throughout Europe and Asia, reaching Italy by 100 A.D., China by 600 A.D., and Germany and France in the 1200s and 1400s, and are mentioned in medieval European texts and in classical Greek writings back to the time of Aristotle. The earliest record of bed bugs in England is that of 1583. Migrating with European explorers to America, infestations first arose in busy seaport towns, and later on appearing farther inland. This pattern that was repeated in the late 1990s, with the reports of infestations first coming from such gateway cities as New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Miami. [4] A 1920s guide advises treating infested mattresses with "high-test gasoline" and a 1935 guide prescribed powdered calcium cyanide.

In the 1800's, bed bugs were significant pest in parts of both the United States and the United Kingdom. Government Entomologist Dr. Riley, PhD, described the ubiquity of bed bugs in 1889:

In the 1930s there were large sections of London where every house was infested, resulting in an investigation by the Ministry of Health and the Public Health Act of 1936 which required councils to take action. Toxic fumigation using sulfur dioxide (sulfur candles) or hydrogen cyanide, are reported to have helped reduce infestations by up to 80% in one town under study. Before World War Two the primary treatment was either heat or fumigation, and barriers behind walls were even constructed to prevent bed bugs from crawling up, while harborage was encouraged using wire mesh below, which periodically would be burned with a blow torch. Some state laws once required that the furniture be tagged as fumigated before it could be resold. DDT became the primary insecticide beginning in 1945, and declining numbers overall continued from the late 30s through 1980s until the recent resurgence.

Diligence and use of the pesticide DDT in the 1950s and broad-based pesticides also resulted in a dramatic reduction of bed bugs overall in the United States, though significant reservoirs of bed bug infestation persisted through this period, particularly in inner-city areas. During the bed bug recession period of the 1950s, infestations were mainly found in homeless shelters, and prisons, while during in the period 1967-73, about 61% of infestations were found in domestic residential property, while about 25% were in institutional settings.[6][7][8]

A current resurgence of bed bug infestations appears to have started almost synchronously in the late 1990s in Europe, the United States, and in Australia. 2007 data from a survey of pest control companies in the latter country indicated a 4500% increase over a seven year period.[9][10]

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Bed bug - Conservapedia