CarbonFeet

If you wake up one day with prickly lumps on your body, you will probably think that you had been bitten by mosquitoes or ants the night beforehand, but there is also a possibility that bedbugs have got at you. If this happens in your own bed, then you have problems. If you are in a hotel, go and make a complaint to the boss.

You can be sure that most hotel managers will take complaints about bed bugs very gravely, because it is well known that the numbers of bedbugs are rising rapidly and have been since 1995. It is also common knowledge that large compensation awards have been made against hotels. Some of them were at hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Most so-called ‘bed bugs’ will only feed on people if their favourite host, often chickens, are not available, but there is one that only sucks human blood and that species is called Cimex lectularius.

Cimex lectularius was virtually extinct in the developed world by the late 1950′s because of the widespread use of DDT in homes and hotels to eradicate all insects such as ants, bed bugs, silverfish, millipedes and cockroaches.

However, there has been a gigantic revival in the number of bedbugs since 1995. In fact, between 1995 and 2001, one report on bedbugs in London stated that incidents of bedbug call-outs had doubled each year.

The recovery in bedbug numbers has been ascribed to global travel and immigration from Asia and Africa. However, it is also likely that they were never completely wiped out and that they have become resistant to modern pesticides. There is not much you can put down or spray around now that will kill bedbugs.

So, what do bed bugs look like? Well, there are lots of different types of bed bugs, but most of them are brownish, unless they have just fed and then there is a red tint to them. However, they can also be white to yellowish. Occasionally, they look banded because bedbugs are covered with short hairs which reflect light like a stripy lawn.

Bedbugs have a beak-like mouth-piece with two tubes. One tube pumps saliva into you and the other sucks blood out. The saliva contains anti-coagulant and a pain-killer, so that you do not know that you have been bitten until long after the bedbug has gone home.

Some people never know, because they are not allergic to the saliva, others get a lump or slight swelling almost immediately, but sometimes the swelling can take a week to appear. These bites may or may not be itchy.

If you travel a lot, or if you go to regions of the world that are less concerned with hygiene, you must be careful about not taking bedbugs home with you. They will not remain on your body, but they may lay eggs in your clothing or hide in your suitcase. Therefore, either before you go home or without delay on arrival have your clothes washed at a temperature above 46c and blast your suitcase with a jet of steam or hot air.

Owen Jones, the author of this article, writes on many topics, but is currently concerned with bed bugs extermination. If you are interested in this, please go over to our website now at Picture Of Bed Bugs for further information.

People have been making candles for a very, very long time and so you can imagine that there have been a lot of changes in the making of candles too. Perhaps the biggest change over all that time is the use to which candles are put. In the beginning, candles were used first and foremost for lighting and in the second place for heat, but nowadays they are used more for decoration as in religious ceremonies and romantic dinners.

It is not entirely certain when the first candles were manufactured or used, but fragments of clay candle holders were found in Egypt which dated back to 4 BC. It is also known that candles were in use in ancient China and Japan. These candles were made from oil extracted from insects and seeds. Meanwhile, taper candles were being used in India made from the oil drawn by boiling cinnamon.

Candles were in service in America during the early years of the first century AD. Before that native Americans probably used oily fish and the bark of the Cerio tree. In fact, when the first European settlers arrived, they used a similar method to manufacture candles from wax extracted from bayberries. Some manufacturers still use bayberry wax in candles, but they are apt to be rather expensive.

Much later, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, tallow was used to make candles, but tallow is made from animal fat and it smelled very bad, particularly when it was burning. Bees wax and paraffin wax were introduced as alternatives for tallow in the early nineteenth century and tallow candles went out of style immediately.

People began manufacturing candles by dipping in about 13 AD. Candle merchants travelled from town to town and house to house making candles to order. In Paris in about 15 AD, candle moulds were invented and that vastly enhanced the candle making process. They were still having issues though with the wick – they just did not seem to burn consistently. The solution was started in 1825 when someone braided the wick in a moulded candle.

This procedure was perfected in 1830 when a braided wick was placed in a moulded candle made from paraffin wax. This produced excellent candles that burned evenly without a foul smell. Not much has changed in the cheap, plain, white candles we use today. The biggest modification came with the proliferation of gas and electricity, because it made the melting of the paraffin wax simpler.

The evolution of candles slowed in the twentieth century as candles went out of style in favour of gas and electric lighting. The use of candles got a new lease of life in the 1970′s when the hippy culture took to using them again. They are still popular now with the sons and daughters of the 70′s hippies, although these days there is a lot more variety. One of the most popular kinds of candles now are the scented or aromatic candles, some of which are used in aromatherapy.

Candle making is once again a cottage or home business with many people manufacturing their own brand of scented candles in their kitchen and selling them to friends or online. It can be rather a profitable hobby-cum-business.

Of course, candles are now more of a luxury, tasteful decoration than they ever were before. You can easily improve atmosphere and ambiance to any room in your house by the deployment of candles. In fact, with appropriate candle holders you can even use candles outside to brighten up your patio or deck in a modern garden.

Owen Jones, the author of this piece writes on a number of topics, but is at present concerned with researching decorative candle holders. If you would like to know more or check out great offers, please go to our website at Wrought Iron Light.

There are in fact quite a few types of bed bug, but the one that most people mean by ‘bedbugs’ is Cimex lectularius. Other species of bedbugs will extract human blood, but normally only if their favoured host, like poultry, is not around.

Bedbugs are small, but not too small to see. Adults are about four or five millimetres long and one-and-a-half to three millimetres in width. They are brownish in colour, but may appear banded because they are covered in short hairs.

Having said that, they are still not easy to get a close look at, because they are very fast and only come out at night. In fact, their favourite dinner time is more of an early breakfast, because they normally dine on us an hour before dawn. If you want to find or catch some bedbugs, this is the best time too do it, because you may see them struggling to get home with full stomachs to sleep it off for a few days before going forth again.

So, rather than waste your time, it is probably better to look at a number of pictures of bedbugs first so that you know what you are looking for.. Bedbugs are attracted by heat and CO2, so one way of trying to catch a few is putting a bar of soap in a centimetre of water and then lying on the bed. After half an hour, get the soap and whip the bed clothes back. You can dab up any slow coaches with the soap.

Then you will have plenty of time to study them under a magnifying glass. If they are not residing in your mattress and you are sure that you have bed bugs, check behind any loose-fitting woodwork.

They love to get into dark crevices to sleep it off and skirting boards or architrave are perfect. So is damaged plaster, broken lino or ripped wall paper.

Hardly any crack is too thin for them, because they are so thin themselves, as you can observe from photos. They look as if they have been crushed. However, the nymphs or babies are very tiny, a bit rounder and often whitish. It takes six moultings for a nymph to become an adult and the moulted skins look just like the insect that abandoned it, but with nothing inside it – as if it had been sort of sucked out.

The bedbug’s skin is actually the key to killing it, as bedbugs have become resistant to most common insecticides. Their skin, or exoskeleton, has a waxy layer on it to prevent dehydration. If you can remove that wax, the insect will dry out and die.

Some modern bedbug sprays include finely powdered glass or silicone which sticks to the insect and as it wriggles into crevices, the powder rubs the wax off. Diatomaceous earth was used for the same reason long ago and it is making a comeback in the fight to exterminate bed bugs. It is non-toxic and environmentally friendly, so safe to use in your home and around your pets.

Owen Jones, the writer of this piece, writes on many topics, but is currently involved with bed bugs extermination. If you are interested in this, please go over to our website now at Picture Of Bed Bugs for more information.