How Long Can Bed Bugs Go Without Food

Adult bed bugs are about 3 16 long and reddish brown in color.

How long can bed bugs go without food. They have evolved to enter a hibernation like state when a food source is unavailable. During her lifespan a female bed bug can lay up to 250 eggs if she is feeding regularly on a human s blood. Unfortunately bed bugs are a lot better at living without food than humans and other animals are. These attempts to starve bed bugs are fraught with difficulty and usually fail because bed bugs have the ability to go without food for very long stretches of time.

They have an oval shaped body are further flattened. To help cope with this fasting period the bugs will form a hunger bubble that fills their gut. We know that 1st instar or baby bed bugs right after they hatch out of an egg can t survive without food as long as adult bed bugs. Adult bed bugs can survive for about five months without a blood meal.

Length of feeding depends on the stage of development how much it ate last time and how long it s been since it last fed. The amount of time they can live without a host varies greatly based on many factors but can be anywhere from 20 days up to 400 days. Once the bed bug settles on a host it will feed for a few minutes. Because of all the children they produce who will in turn reproduce one single female bed bug can lead to a bed bug infestation of over 5 000 bed bugs just in a six month time frame.

Cimex hemipterus before you can go into how long a bed bug lives it is important to understand how they look as some of these characteristic features are responsible for the adaptation they get against your treatments.