Small, brown, oval-shaped, and about the size of an apple seed, bed bugs are often confused with other insects such as fleas, ticks, and carpet beetles. While bed bugs are a pest issue that needs solving, it’s important to first be sure that you are really dealing with bed bugs.
Bed bugs can still be hard to spot, but the experts at Western Exterminator can help. If you need help identifying pests or with bed bug removal and prevention, get in touch with us and schedule a bed bug inspection.
Bed bugs go through several changes during their life, and their appearance can shift depending on age, feeding habits, and where they’re hiding. To help understand what bed bugs look like, it’s important to look at the details. Knowing the typical bed bug shape, their color at each stage of development, and typical bed bug sizes can help you work out if the insect you’ve spotted is a bed bug. Read on to learn how to identify a bed bug based on its size, shape, and color.
Think you’ve got an infestation? Read our dedicated guide for tips about how to get rid of bed bugs.
Bed bugs are very small, which works to their advantage as it allows them to easily hide when they are between feedings. Their flat bodies allow them to wriggle into tiny cracks and folds of a mattress. As adults, they are between four to five mm in length. Nymphs (or immature bed bugs) are even smaller, making them nearly impossible to see with the naked eye.
Bed bugs are small insects without wings. They are very flat and have round bodies divided into three segments. The first, at the top, is the head. Right behind that is a small segment known as the pronotum. The largest part of the bed bug's body is the abdomen, which is wide and round. Adult bed bugs have six legs and two antennae at the top of their head.
Bed bug nymphs (immature) are usually white or tan in color. Fully grown adults are a rusty, reddish-brown. After a blood meal, bed bugs appear bloated and red, just like mosquitoes and ticks often do after they have fed.
The bed bug life cycle includes bed bug eggs and five larval, or nymphal, stages. At each stage, the bed bug has one blood meal, which helps it to grow, shed its skin, and metamorphose into the next stage. After five molts, the bed bug is considered to have reached maturity. At each stage of its life cycle, a bed bug will grow from pale in color to an increasingly dark reddish-brown, while it increases in size steadily.
The amount of time that it takes a bed bug to progress through the life cycle will be dependent on temperature and availability of blood meals. It may take anywhere from 21 days at 86°F to 120 days at 65°F. The temperature threshold for bed bug eggs to hatch is 55-59°F.
If you’re dealing with itchy bites at night and you’re not sure what’s causing them, schedule an inspection with Western Exterminator.
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