A popular question regarding bedbugs is how long they can survive without a host, or some sort of feeding. The truth is there are a several factors that contribute to the answer of this question, but generally speaking you should assume they can live upwards of a year without feeding.
That’s right, one whole year.
This means that simply moving out of your bedroom and into a spare bedroom or couch and trying to wait it out isn’t a good strategy. The sad reality is not only are they able to play the waiting game better than you are but eventually they will start exploring in search of a new host. This means they may find their way into that spare bedroom or onto that couch and you’ll be back to square one.
Something you don’t often hear mentioned when discussing bed bugs are that like anything else they have their cycles. And here I’m not referring to the various stages they progress through from egg to adult, but rather peak periods of activity depending on the time of year. As with anything else, they are affected by their environment and will often reach their worst at the peak of summer, only to decline as the winter months set in.
Think about how ever summer you have to deal with flies breeding in your garbage or fruit flies breeding in your kitchen. That extra ambient heat sends all insects into overdrive, speeding up their breeding cycles and reducing the time it takes for eggs to mature and hatch. And guess what, bed bugs are insects too and as such will be affected by the seasons.
Let’s take a look at Google Trends for the last 8 years. You’ll notice a clear pattern in when people are searching for bed bugs:
Each of those peaks you see there are July and August, with each valley being December through February.
Of course one must be mindful of the fact that this is going to be dependant on what part of the world you are in. For example when I search for trends on chinches in Argentina, which is the spanish word for bed bug I found the inverse to be true. They appear to peak in Janurary of each year, and their lowest in July.
However I found some interesting results when searching for percevejos, which is the portugese word for bed bugs, in Brazil. While there were definite peaks and valleys in when they were most active I could not discern a clearn pattern when it came to seasons. It almost seemed to me like they were most active in both the middle of summer and winter, which is quite unexpected. However I was specfically looking at São Paulo where the winters tend to be rather mild.
So how does this information affect you? And how can you use it to fight or avoid bed bugs? To me the most obvious is that if you are traveling to an area in its summer months then you should be aware that bed bugs are going to be in their peak season and you should take extra steps to protect your luggage and clothing. Personally, as a Canadian who is used to the cold we often travel to hot countries in their winter months, as their winters are like summers to us. So this gives me comfort knowing that bed bugs will be less active when traveling to those places.
In addition to that it is the start of November as I write this article. So here in Canada that means it is the start of winter and that tells me I can expect a decline in bed bug populations. As someone who just had a resurgance of bed bugs two months ago I know that they are going to a period of dormancy which means I won’t be fight so much of an uphill battle. For the next several months at least I have the weather on my side, but I also know that I need to have this problem completely dealt with by April or May or else we will have a very unpleasant summer.
