How Long Can Bedbugs Live Without Feeding in Bromley?

The question usually comes up for a reason. Someone is moving out, a spare room is being shut up, or a house is going to be empty for a while, and they hope the bedbugs will die off in the meantime. It is an understandable hope. It rarely works.

The Short Answer

An adult bedbug can go a long time between meals: weeks at the very least, and a good deal longer in a cool room. The published figures range widely, because they depend on temperature, the age of the insect and when it last fed. What matters is that the time runs well past the length of most holidays, most gaps between tenants and most spells a spare room is shut.

Why Temperature Makes Such a Difference

Bedbugs do not control their own body temperature. In a warm room they are active, use energy quickly and need to feed more often. In a cool room they slow right down and use very little. So turning the heating off in an empty house does not starve them sooner; it can help them wait longer.

This is also why heat is used as a treatment. Warmth makes them hungry; a temperature bedbugs cannot survive, held across the whole room, kills them outright. Our guide on whether bedbugs can survive heat treatment explains the difference.

Eggs and Young Bedbugs

Eggs do not need a meal to hatch. A room left empty will still see eggs hatching, and the newly hatched nymphs then wait for someone to come back. Young bedbugs cannot go as long without feeding as adults, but they are the ones people underestimate, because they are tiny and pale.

What Happens When Someone Comes Back

Bedbugs find people by warmth and the carbon dioxide in their breath. When someone sleeps in the room again, the survivors come out, feed and start breeding. The problem often looks gone during the empty spell and returns within weeks of the room being used.

That pattern catches people out after a move. A house that was quiet at the viewing can show bites within a few weeks of the new occupants sleeping there, and it is easy to blame the move itself when the bugs were already in the frame or skirting.

Why Throwing Things Out Does Not Starve Them Either

A related hope is that clearing the room will leave them with nothing to live in. Bedbugs do not need a mattress to survive the wait. They sit in the joints of the bed frame, behind skirting boards, under the edge of the carpet, in picture frames and plug sockets. Taking the mattress out removes one hiding place and spreads whatever was in it along the stairs and hallway on the way out.

So do not throw out the bed or mattress unless we advise it. Leave the furniture where it is and have the room treated with it in place.

An empty room is also not a sealed one. Hungry bedbugs may wander further in search of a host: along skirtings, under doors, and in converted houses through gaps in floors and walls into the next flat.

What Actually Works

• Heat treatment, usually one visit, which kills adults, nymphs and eggs.
• Chemical treatment, usually two or three visits about 10–14 days apart, where the residue catches newly hatched bugs.
• An inspection from £120 before a room is shut up or reused, so you know what is there.

Do not move into another room to leave the affected one empty. Sleeping elsewhere usually carries them into the second room, and then there are two to treat. Treatments start at £220.

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