How fast do bedbugs reproduce?

Answer 1

It depends. If you have a major infestation in your bed or nearby they will reproduce and multiply extremely quickly, the more adult bedbugs there are the faster will they multiply which is why the sooner you take action to get rid of the infestation the better for you. But in the very early stages there will be no reproduction. To explain this you need to understand bedbug nymphs can not lay eggs nor reproduce. So after you get your first bedbug eggs hatching in your home, (most likely as a result of bedbug eggs being laid inside your luggage somewhere where you stayed when you were on holiday after you unpack very probably without seeing the tiny eggs in the luggage which will be stuck to a hard surface out of sight in a crevice inside the holdall or suitcase a few days after you get home the eggs will first hatch. Each bedbug egg wherever it hatches in or near a home produces a bedbug nymph in its first or smallest stage. After hatching the newly born nymph will be able to detect the breath of any person or persons asleep even50 meters or more from where it hatches. So it will instinctively crawl and climb towards the source of that because it already knows that is a source of food. When it finds your sleeping place it will climb up or occasionally drop down into your bed and bite you for its first blood meal and it takes it about 3 minutes to complete that meal. although you are very unlikely to feel anything when it is having its meal off you because it injects a kind of anaesthetic into you which makes you go numb. After its first meal the nymph will find a hiding place such as in a crevice inside your mattress and come back for more meals on subsequent nights. so an infestation of your bed is progressing probably without you knowing. Each nymph goes through 5 nymph stages of moulting and growing in size, and it needs a blood meal off you or somebody else asleep after each nymph stage. So it will take 3 weeks after the eggs hatch before the nymphs become adult bedbugs and you are unlikely to realise a bedbug infestation has started in your bed during this period as they only come out at night when you are likely to be fast asleep and when it is dark. So once they have become adult bedbugs from then on the bedbugs will be able to reproduce and female bedbugs lay up to a dozen eggs per day! So in its first week one female adult bedbug may lay 70 or more bedbug eggs in or near your bed, usually in crags or crevices perhaps in nearby furniture or in floorboards under the carpet or in your mattress near where you sleep. So within 2 or 3 months after your holiday when the first bedbug nymph first found your bed, you could well have a thousand or more bedbugs and perhaps 500 females laying more and more eggs in or near your bed and you are likely to get bitten more and more every night and get red marks all over you . All the beds in your home will probably soon become infested. as when one bed is getting overcrowded bedbugs are likely to detect the breath of somebody else asleep in your home and move there to set up their base and have their meals on future nights when that person is asleep.