Extraordinary stories are current of the remarkable intelligence of this insect in circumventing various efforts to prevent its gaining access to beds. Most of these are undoubtedly exaggerations, but the inherited experience of many centuries of companionship with man, during which the bedbug has always found its host an active enemy, has resulted in a knowledge of the habits of the human animal and a facility of concealment, particularly as evidenced by its abandoning beds and often going to distant quarters for protection and hiding during daylight, which indicate considerable apparent intelligence.
Like its allies, the bedbug undergoes what is known as an incomplete metamorphosis. In other words, the insect from its larval to its adult stage is active and similar in form, structure, and habit, contrasting with flies and moths in their very diverse life stages of larva, chrysalis, or pupa, and winged adult.
The eggs ([fig. 3, d]) are white oval objects having a little projecting rim around one edge and may be found in batches of from 6 to 50 in cracks and crevices where the parent bugs go for concealment. In confinement eggs may be deposited almost daily over a period of two months or more and commonly at the rate of from one to five eggs per day, but sometimes much larger batches are laid. As many as 190 eggs have been thus obtained from a single captured female.[5]
[5] Girault, A. A. Preliminary studies on the biology of the bedbug, Cimex lectularius, Linn. III. Facts obtained concerning the habits of the adult. In Jour. Econ. Biol., v. 9, no. 1, p. 25-45. 1914.
The eggs hatch in a week or 10 days in the hot weather of midsummer, but cold may lengthen or even double this egg period or check development altogether. The young escape by pushing up the lid-like top with its projecting rim. When first emerged ([fig. 3, a, b]) they are yellowish white and nearly transparent, the brown color of the more mature insect increasing with the later molts ([fig. 4]).
Fig. 3.—Bedbug: Egg and newly hatched larva: a, Larva from below; b, larva from above; c, claw; d, egg; c, hair or spine of larva. Greatly enlarged, natural size of larva and egg indicated by hair lines. (Author's illustration.)