The temperatures of the winter can be bone-chilling. You might have noticed pests almost wholly disappearing during the cold months and wondered if bed bugs die in the winter. However, bed bugs are more resilient than you may think. They can survive in cold and other harsh conditions and learn new ways to adapt themselves to the outer environment.
If you suspect you have bed bugs in your house, contact pest control today. Do not rely on the winters to arrive and kill off the bed bugs. While extreme temperatures can kill bed bugs, winters are not enough to eradicate these critters. Click here to learn more about bed bugs and how they can be removed.
Are bed bugs active during the winter months?
This question is very commonly asked, and the answer might be complex. Bed bugs become inactive during winter but do not hibernate or sleep like bears or frogs. Instead, they enter a diapause phase, slowing their metabolism and pausing their development. There is no specific time when they will wake up, but they usually do when the weather becomes warm again.
While other pests like mosquitoes and black flies become inactive during the winter, bed bugs might still be actively crawling around in your house. This is because these bugs almost exclusively live inside your homes. Thus, if it feels like summer or spring inside your house, which it does due to heaters, they have no problem remaining active.
Therefore, the short answer is that as long as the temperature inside your house feels like summer, you can expect bed bugs. The temperature outside your house does not really matter.
Can the cold kill bed bugs?
Yes. Extreme temperatures, be they hot or cold, can kill bed bugs, but only when they are severe and prolonged enough. You cannot expect the bed bugs to die by leaving them in the cold only for a few minutes or hours. To successfully kill them, bed bugs need to be at zero degrees Fahrenheit for at least four days.
According to the reports given by the Yale University of Public Health, female bed bugs are even more difficult to deal with than male ones. Female bed bugs have a supercooling point and can only die at -20 degrees Celsius or -4 degrees Fahrenheit.
To conclude, bed bugs can usually survive cold weather unless it s very extreme.
