Do bed bugs lay eggs on the human body

Do bed bugs lay eggs on the human body?

Like every other insect and animals, bed bugs maintain their life cycle by mating and reproducing. The secret to stopping their wildfire spread is by understanding their reproductive cycle. It is often believed that bed bugs actually do lay their eggs on the human body. Well, let’s find out how true this is.

Reproductive cycle of Bed Bugs

Bed bugs, like other insects, reproduce by mating and laying eggs. Just that you may never get to see their egg because they are no larger than a speck of dust. A female bed bug can lay as much as over 250 eggs within her relatively short lifespan. To ensure maximum egg production, it is important for a female bug to stay as close as possible to food source – humans. Also, they try as much as possible to reduce the number of times they mate because mating scars their reproductive organ. At this high reproduction rate, all it would take a male and female bug to produce full colony of blood suckers is about 4 months.

On the average, it takes a baby bug 12 days to go from the nymph (newly hatched egg) stage to adult stage. However, this development cycle is heavily influenced by the temperature of their immediate surroundings. Don’t get it twisted; a newly hatched nymph is capable of feeding on your blood right from day one.

Do bed bugs lay eggs on the human body?

The short answer to this question is, no! They won’t; they can’t. True, microscopic insects like scabies are notorious for laying eggs right in the pores of our skin, not for bed bugs. In the first place, bed bugs have a bashful personality – they will do whatever they can to avoid being seen. So why expose their young where they can be easily seen and killed?

To protect her young, the female will rather lay her eggs right where she lives: crevices, clothing materials, and mattress. Human body is just not an option. Even if they wanted to, their body isn’t properly equipped to stay for long on the human skin.

Disrupting their reproductive cycle

The key to offsetting the reproductive cycle of bed bugs is making it impossible for the female to lay eggs. While this may seem effective, it is impractical. A better approach would be killing off at nymph stage. This can be easily achieved through the use of pesticides and insect sprays.

Note of caution: not every pesticide will work on bed bugs. Bed bugs, over the years, have developed tolerance to pesticides that once killed them. So, using conventional pesticides is a total waste of time and resources.

One effective and pocket friendly spray that works against them is Nature Mace’s Bed Bug Killer. It’s made mostly from organic, natural ingredients thus ensuring the health of your kids and pets aren’t jeopardized.

Even though they don’t lay eggs on our skin, they can do so on the hair. If you suspect your hair has been turned to a nesting ground, wash thoroughly with anti-bedbug shampoo.