Manchester Bed Bugs
Manchester Bed Bugs
Manchester Bed Bugs – One of the most reviled and misunderstood pests known to man is the bed bug (Cimex lectularius). How many of us gone off to sleep at night as children with the words of our parents in our ears ‘sleep tight and don’t let the bed bugs bite’?
Bed bugs probably started to feed on man at about the time we moved into caves, the ‘bat bugs’ Cimex pilosellus and Cimex pipistrella primarily feed on bats and it is probable that bat feeding species of bug evolved to feed on human blood when our ancesters started dwelling in bat infested caves.
Until the arrival of DDT in the early 20th century bed bugs were common non-paying guests in much low quality homes.
The later part of the 20th century experienced pest control companies dealing with very few bed bug calls indeed, their presence being largely confined to inexpenisve holiday camps and student accomodation etc.
Many people mistake dust mites, which are not visible to the unaided eye, with bed bugs which very definitely are.
Adult bedbugs are reddy-brown, about a quarter of an inch in size and decidely swollen after a meal of our blood.
They grow by an incomplete metamorphosis which means that the nymphs are just smaller copies of the adult, they do not have a pupal stage like fleas or a fly.
Bed bugs regularly feed on human blood every 7 – 10 days, emerging in the hours before dawn and finding their target by detecting the exhaled CO2 from human breath and when close in on their target, infra red body heat.
In the absence of a suitable human host to dine on they can [lay|lie|stay|remain dormant for periods of up to 18 months.
Indications of a bed bug infestation are spots of blood on bedding and on the underside of mattresses and some people can react badly to their bites.
The early 21st century has seen bed bug numbers explode across the globe, the easy availability of global travel and economic migration have both been blamed for the resurgence.
What is positive is that thet are now making a real return not only in poor quality dwellings but high class hotels, schools and even hospitals.
One London borough reports a doubling of bed bug infestations each year from 1995 – 2001.
One night away in an infested hotel is all it takes, they hitch a ride in your suitcases or bags. Pest control companies are also now reporting instances of transport related bug infestations on tubes, trains and buses so a simple journey to work on an infested tube or train can be sufficient to spread the infestation to your own home.
They are an expensive pest to deal with as contrary to popular opinion they do not just live in beds. They infest any nook and cranny conveniently close to a sleeping human, beds, electrical sockets, televisions, bed-side telephones etc and treatment is both difficult and time consuming. They have even been found living beneath the toe-nails of infirm people and in the rolls of flesh on heavily over-weight people.
They are not a pest that can be tackled by an amateur and a professional will almost certainly be needed.
That concludes this article entitled Manchester Bed Bugs
Pest Control in Manchester Wasp or Bee?
We destroy wasps’ nests at a fixed fee of £29.50 (except postocdes L, CW & CH £39.50) 7 days per week
Free Phone 0800 019 8382
Pest Control in Manchester Wasp or Bee?
Pest Control in Manchester Wasp or Bee? – as a pest controller covering Manchester, Cheshire and Lancashire it has become obvious that there is a great deal of confusion, especially in people under forty between wasps and bees and even between honeybees and bumblebees.
Perhaps in these heath and safety obsessed days schools no longer have the summertime nature rambles of my youth and that is a great pity.
At a distance it is possible to the untrained eye to confuse wasps and honeybees but bumblebees should never be in doubt.
This One’s A Wasp
A wasp is any insect of the order Hymenoptera and suborder Apocrita that is neither a bee nor ant but in terms of common understanding we are dealing in North West Britain with just three species which we term wasps, The Common Wasp (Vespula vulgaris), The German Wasp (Vespula germanica) and the relative newcomer termed the ‘Euro Wasp’ (Dolichovespula media).
The biology of wasps and bees is very different.
In the late autumn a wasps’ nest dies out completely and is never re-used. The workers and males die but the newly produced queens hibernate for the winter before waking in the spring to start nest building.
At the first sign of warmer weather the young queens emerge from hibernation and commence nest building, mixing rotten wood with saliva to make ‘wasp paper’ with which to construct the nest.
She will lay 15 – 20 eggs in cells inside the nest and tend these until the first workers emerge to take over the nest building process.
An Average Wasps’ Nest
Any reports of wasps’ nests prior to June, and certainly any in late April or May will always turn out to be a bee species of which there are many.
Wasp nest building continues throughout the summer and in the autumn the nest produces immature queens and males which then mate. A single wasps’ nest may produce over 2000 new queens.
This is the one that makes the honey
The bee which makes the honey unsurprisingly is the honeybee (Apis mellifera) but a staggering number of people confuse the honeybee with the bumblebee (Bombus spp.)
The honeybee has an altogether different lifecycle to the wasp, the entire colony surviving the winter, and hence are seen much earlier in the year.
A feature of the honeybee is the way in which new colonies are formed. In late spring and throughout the summer the colony will produce new queens which split or ‘bud’ from the old colony taking several thousand worker bees with them; these are called swarms and can actually be heard in flight.
A honeybee swarm Manchester 2007
This causes alarm in many people who will then ring a pest control company and declare that a ‘wasps’ nest’ has just arrived.
Clearly we know immediately that we are dealing with a bee swarm and can often point them in the direction of a beekeeper who may be able to remove the swarm unharmed.
Contrary to urban myth, and indeed the web sites of many local councils, honeybees are not a protected species in Britain and there are circumstances where there is no alternative other than to destroy a colony.
Frequently they establish a colony or ‘hive’ in a chimney stack and where this is venting a gas fire this is clearly dangerous and it is often necessary to destroy the colony.
After destroying the colony the owner of the property has a legal and moral duty to have any honeycomb removed from the stack as if it is left in place it will be robbed out by wild or commercial hive bees, resulting in the death of those colonies.
The Bumblbee Bombus terrestris – Male
A responsible pest controller will not destroy a colony unless arrangements to remove the honeycomb are in place.
The bumblebee has a lifecycle similar to a wasp in that only the new Queens survive the winter and start new nests in spring. A bumblebees’ nest is an insignificant affair, now where near as intricate as a wasps’ nest and rarely contains more than 300 workers at most whereas a honeybee colony or wasps’ nest may have upwards of ten thousand inhabitants.
Another common myth is that bees can only sting once and whilst this is true of the honeybee, the bumblebee like a wasp, can sting multiple times.
Bumblebees are however extremely placid and will only ever sting as a last resort and therefore it should rarely be necessary to destroy a bumblebee nest.
That concludes this article entitled – Pest Control in Manchester Wasp or Bee?
Tags: bee swarm, bees, get rid of a wasps nest, get rid of wasps, manchester pest control, pest control manchester, s
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