How Old Do Bed Bugs Get?
WouterBed bugs enter the nymphal stage in their development and can take between one and four months to reach the adult stage. During this time they will go through at least five molts, each lasting about a day. Nymphs range in size from 1.5mm to 4.5mm and have a clear/white color. They will then change to a tan or yellow color before reaching the reddish brown color of the adult stage.
Adult bed bugs are 5.5mm long. During the nymph stage, bed bugs must feed on blood to molt. They need at least one blood meal a day to molt. The adult bed bug will live three to nine months and lay up to 6 eggs per day.
In laboratory conditions, adult bed bugs live six to twelve months. However, in the real world, their lifespan is significantly shorter. This is because they require food and water to grow. When they’re starving, they enter a hibernation-like state and use fewer resources. This means that they have a limited amount of time to feed. If you want to get rid of a bedbug infestation fast, the first thing you should do is throw away the mattresses in question.
One way to estimate the length of a bed bug infestation is to count the number of adult bugs. It takes seven weeks for an egg to mature into an adult, so if you find several adults in a home, this indicates that the infestation has lasted longer than seven weeks. In other words, an infestation that started with just a few bugs will result in at least five adults.
