Bed Bug Life Cycle

As you can see from the diagram below, bed bugs have seven stages in their life cycle from egg to fed adult. The egg hatches and becomes a nymph. The nymph will feed five times and shed it’s exoskeleton five times before becoming an adult bed bug as part of its life cycle.

Once the nymph turns into an adult, it is ready to start reproduction with the opposite sex. But first, the adult needs to feed before the final life cycle is complete and the female can lay eggs.

A female bed bug can lay up to 500 eggs in her life.

The male simply stabs the female in the side to impregnate her. The female will often go off alone to avoid being stabbed to death. Once she has separated herself from the other bugs, she generally lays her eggs. Because she is trying to escape the male, this is how bed Bugs spread further and further away from the bed.

A female Bed Bug can lay 3 or 4 eggs a day and throughout her lifetime, she can have a big family and produce up to 500 eggs. Good luck keeping track of birthdays! Generally, Mama loves it when the temperatures is around 20C so her babies can hatch.

Bed Bug larva are about 1 mm and are sticky white cylinders. Mama is very protective and lays her eggs in dark crevices and there can be up to 50 in a cluster. It takes between 6 and 17 days to hatch. The nymph babies come out hungry and ready to feed on you.

The life cycle of a bed bug ends around 10 months to a year.  Let’s do some math – one bed bug will bite you approximately 60 times in one year. Yikes