Bed bugs are ruddy brown, tiny, flat and oval-shaped insect without wings which at night feast on human blood. Bed bugs are deemed to be night-time insects as they are mainly active at midnight.

Bed bugs are dispersing very rapidly in houses, motels, inns, buses, taxis and railway stations. You now speculate as to how many eggs the bed bugs can lie as they are spreading very quickly

Bed bugs are similar to other insects in that they reproduce very fast. And they lay many eggs too. You may now inquire, bed bugs lay how many eggs??

Bed bugs suck human blood. Several types of bed bugs feed both on humans and bats. Therefore if there are bats in your attic a possibility that your abode is infected with bugs is there. If you your attic are cured of bats occupancy, you can afterward effortlessly deal with the bed bugs invasion.

Bed bugs hatch from eggs. After hatching from the eggs they develop into nymphs

How many eggs are laid by bed bugs? In a year the feminine bed bug lays a minimum 300 (three hundred) eggs and 1000 (thousand) eggs during its lifespan. After mating it lays in a day a maximum of three eggs. In around ten days the eggs of bed bugs are hatched.

The life of a bed bug is lengthy. Bed bugs might also live eighteen months without eating. Picture that! Eggs of Bed bug can endure on any surface, but prefer paper, wood or cloth more than metals and plastics, whereas the nymphs can survive without feeding for nearly six months

Which are the probable spaces for female bed bug to lay the eggs? The Bed bugs will lay its eggs in tiny and slight cracks to guard the eggs from damage. Female bed bugs conceal the eggs under the beddings, on crevices in the headboard, beneath the crease in the nightstand next to the bed, within the other wooden furnishings and bedroom wallpaper in the vicinity.

The number of eggs laid by the bed bug determines the rate of invasion. A bed bug ridden mattress full of its eggs implies hundred’s of bed bugs are everywhere laying eggs, and they are being hatched daily

But if we destroy the bed bugs, the eggs of bed bugs also should be destroyed. If you leave the eggs unharmed, they can hatch and grow into either a male or female bed bug which can produce a thousand eggs. If there are more than a thousand female bed bugs there in your house, you will not know further how many eggs bed bugs can lay.

Eggs of bed bugs can be identified easily. They look like termite eggs. However unlike eggs of termites, bed bug eggs live near ruddy russet stains and have an unpleasant, sweet-like stench, actually a bit stale. The reddish dark stain is excrement or bed bugs faecus. Bed bugs alone have this type of excrement arrangement. However, the odor of bed bug comes from the odor gland of the bed bugs. They discharge the aroma for breeding and it also works as a protective boundary.

Eggs of bed bugs must not be squashed or mashed. Bed bug eggs must be destroyed by using insecticides. When you crush bed bug eggs, several eggs might not be crushed and they have another opportunity to procreate some more generations of bed bugs at your place.

Discover the finest spray to kill insects. Specifically use those meant for bed bugs eradication. On using the chemical spray for bed bugs, eggs and nymphs will be killed along with the adults. Though countless say that such chemicals to kill bed bugs are ineffective to free your home from bed bugs, nevertheless they are the best substitute to physical extermination of bed bugs (pounding and mashing of adult and egg bed bugs to spots) and the greatest replacement for DDT. In the US, DDT was used to kill every sort of insect from the year 1940 to 1950. While DDT was successful in doing away with pests, it is now prohibited in the US and some other countries due to its injurious effect on humans.

Since there are over 1,000 species of bats, these mammals also have a wide variety of different mating habits. However, there are certain characteristics that are common among most members of the bat population. The reproduction and mating habits of bats are useful to know if you plan on erecting a bat house, as these cycles will effect how and when bats will occupy your residence.

When do bats reproduce

The most influential factor in the bat breeding cycle is the weather. Female bats must have a sufficient amount of food available while carrying a child to guarantee the embryo is developed properly. For this reason, in temperate climates, bats generally give birth during the summer. However, in the tropics, bats have more flexibility as when to give birth, though they still generally take on a annual rhythm that involves them giving birth at the same time of the year. Most bat species only give birth once a year; however, some bats near the equator may produce more frequently.

Bat mating process

Bats usually beginning mating for the first time at approximately 14 months, though there are some bats who mature sexually much slower. The mating process often takes place at night, with the male bat awakening the female by biting her on the neck and then initiating copulation. If copulation occurs during the day, the male will initiate sex by rubbing its head against the female. Bats are promiscuous animals and males and females will often copulate with many different partners, whom they often won’t encounter again.

Embryonic development and the gestation period in bats

Because mother bats need significant amounts of food to nourish an embryo, they often delay fertilization by either storing the sperm in a reproductive tract or delaying implantation of the egg. This occurs primarily in bats in temperate latitudes, where bats usually give birth during the early summer.

Bat Maternity Colonies

When mother bats are ready to give birth, which usually occurs during the summer months, they will often congregate together in maternity colonies. These colonies vary greatly in size, but can amass to huge numbers. A maternity colony in Eagle Creek Cave in Arizona in the 1960s held close to 20 million bats.

Giving birth

Baby bats are born in a relatively helpless state and will almost immediately crawl into the fur of their mother. They are usually hairless and blind, but are fairly large for mammal newborns, in the range of one-fifth to one-third the size of their mother. Small bats spend most of their early days attached to their mother, consuming milk from her body. Unlike humans and most other mammals, they are born with up to 22 teeth. They rapidly grow in size, quickly developing wings and fur. At the age of two months, young bats are fully independent, able to fly on their own, and set off away from their mother to fend for themselves.

And now, for something completely bi-partisan. Let us please retire the most ubiquitous – yet, strangely, endangered – special interest group ever to be pimped for a platform. The ever noble, ever revered, ever to be protected and championed (during an election year), Hard-working American.

According to our candidates, it’s for the sake of the Hard-working Americans that we must have nationalized health care. The Hard-working Americans who need domestic drilling. Who, more than a Hard-working American, deserves a tax break? Or reproductive liberty, protection of their unborn children, or the right to carry a handgun. It is the Hard-working Americans who need lower prescription drug costs, job security, the right to pray in school and the right to protest prayer.

For the sake of Hard-working Americans we need school vouchers, legalized marijuana, unlimited opportunities to accrue personal debt and the comfort and convenience of making someone else pay for the bailout.

Free Internet access to child porn at the local library? If the Hard-working Americans need it, then by golly, we’ve got to let them have it. If they’re scared of the jihad, then all head coverings must come off. The Can-Am-Mex highway… illegal? Immoral? A sign of the End Times? Let’s ask the Hard-working Americans what they want. Whatever it is, we’ll promise to give it to them, because unlike our opponents, we care about Hard-working Americans.

Who, exactly, is a Hard-working American? Is it the nature of the work or the effort put into it that qualifies one for the moniker? Are we to measure the volume of work produced, the time it takes, the quality of the outcome, the number of people impacted by the work, the pre-requisite training, the level of skill required, the contribution made to a greater whole (whose whole, and who decides that it’s ‘greater’), the race/sex/religion/physical ability/socio-economic class of the person doing the work…?

Whose definition of a Hard-working American shall we use? Madonna’s? Dr. Laura’s? Does Hollywood get a vote?

How hard is it to hold a cup of coffee in one hand and push a few levers with the other as you watch hot tar dump and spread onto a highway? How hard is that? Is it harder in the pouring rain than in the sweltering heat and humidity? Is it hard if you’re pushing the levers by the night of floodlights on a freeway at 2:00 a.m. or working with the sun light on a residential/school route during the morning rush hour?

What about neuro-surgery – is that hard? Are you a Harder-working American if you repair neural tube defects in utero than if you restore facial nerve function after a botched face lift? Or if your patients are on Medicaid rather than an employee-sponsored HMO plan?

How are we to measure hard work? Does anyone in the pharmaceutical industry work hard? Surely not the over-paid drug reps, tooling around in their company cars, gabbing on their company cell phones, wielding short skirts and free lunches to wheedle prescriptions from unsuspecting (or worse, unethical) physicians. I’m sure it’s not hard at all to be away from their spouses and children (who sob “When are you coming home?” into the phone every evening) 6-8 times a year for mind-numbing sales meetings and product training, with pass/fail tests (if you fail, you go home without a job) delivered after every presentation. I can’t imagine it’s hard at all to plan long-term care for their parents, college for their children, or a new roof for their home when their compensation plan changes twice a year, managed care organizations block physicians from prescribing their product, their territory grows (with a week’s notice) from three cities to three states, and their new boss is a misogynist with impulse control problems.

Are teachers Hard-working Americans? I imagine most of them think so, yet I know some people who think it’s a pretty sweet gig to have extended holiday breaks, summers off, and the freedom to assign heavy homework to make up for what you don’t teach in class.

I imagine everyone would agree that nurses work hard. What about hair dressers? You stand in one place most of the day, sucking chemicals into your skin and lungs that will almost certainly sentence you to a variety of respiratory problems… unless, of course, carpal tunnel syndrome forces you into early retirement before your lungs collapse.

The problem I have with the candidates’ wholesale co-opting of the term Hard-working Americans is that it implies that there exists a vast, undifferentiated body of Americans who aren’t. After all, the purpose of a label is to include some and exclude others. To accept the classification of Hard-working American is to agree that not everyone is that, which doesn’t worry me nearly as much as the obvious need to then define who’s in and who’s out.

I think the term Hard-working American is like the term “good house guest”. We all think we’re one. And we think we know plenty of people who aren’t.

The over-use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides in tandem with the Green Revolution of nineteen sixties and seventies (also known as the new seed-fertilizer-water technology) in the Indian context following two decades of their widespread application in the West, has hardened the soil, decreased its fertility, polluted air and water, and brought hazards to our health and environment. Ironically, despite the disastrous consequences of the Green Revolution in the northern parts of the country in recent years, the government seems to be in mood to spread the aftermath of this chemical-seed-fertilizer technology to other parts of the country. However, the hazards of chemical fertilizers on health and environment have been well established by studies carried out from time to time and they pose serious challenges to sustainable development. In this perspective moving towards bio-fertilizers and organic farming from a system of farming requiring high doses of chemical fertilizers and pesticides seems to be a viable alternative as the latter is observed to be friendly to health and environment.

Chemical Fertilizers and Environment

Chemical or synthetic fertilizers are basically salts by definition, and therefore, are expected to be harmful to agriculture in the long run. Yet they were promoted by their manufacturers under the misgiving that they would replenish the nutrients in the soil. Contrary to this, studies carried out from time to time have established that synthetic fertilizers tend to replenish only nitrogen, potassium, and phosphorous, while depleting other nutrients and minerals that are naturally found in fertile soil. Decrease in soil fertility also corroborated with continual use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides in the field as revealed in these studies.

Excessive use of phosphatic fertilizers cause hardening of the soil as phosphorous does not dissolve in water, while alkaline fertilizers like sodium-nitrate, basic slag develops alkalinity in soil reducing its fertility. Increasing use of chemical fertilizers also causes imbalance in quantity of specific nutrients in the soil adversely affecting, in turn, soil fertility and vegetation.

Soil fertility is also reduced due to pesticides applied to wipe out unwanted herbs in the field, insecticides meant to kill pests, and chemicals that have bio-cidal activity affecting rodents etc. Pesticides cause land degradation in various ways. They kill some useful species like the earth worms and micro-organisms that maintain the natural fertility of the soil by their activities. The bacteria or micro-organisms in the soil would normally break down organic matter into plant nutrients, and help convert nitrogen from the air into a plant-usable form. There are other useful soil bacteria such as “disease organisms” which keep cutworms, chinch bugs, grubs, and other parasites in check. Decline in the organic matter of the soil also results in hardening of the soil which, besides affecting vegetation also decreases infiltration and water retention capacity.

Besides, application of chemical fertilizers and pesticides causes contamination of the aqua system both directly and indirectly. For instance, nitrogen is toxic to fish and invertebrates. It is also toxic to humans. People who depend on rural wells for potable water have higher risk of exposure to conditions like Methemoglobinemia, and aka Blue Baby Syndrome which damages blood cells and is traced to high levels of nitrate concentration as ground water is contaminated. The herbicide atrazine, one of the most commonly used pesticides, is known to be a common water contaminant. Pesticides developed in recent years are found to be more toxic to water dwelling insects, planktons, crustaceans and fish. Even a low level of the herbicide atrazine, through contamination of streams, ponds and estuaries can be harmful to the whole aqua system. It may inhibit the growth of algae and plankton affecting the diet and reproduction of fish or other water bodies.

It has been observed that, chemical pesticides no more killed the target pests, for the latter had developed resistance absorbing the residue of such pesticides while they have hit the non-target pests, birds and micro-organisms beneficial to agriculture and environment. There are pesticides like organochlorine that are, though breakable, relatively faster than DDT, hit the non-target organisms. They enter the food chain of human-beings and remain accumulated in species like the eagle, falcon and kites. The recent decline in the eagle population is the cause of it. There are cases of decline in kite and vulture population in India due to use of pesticide of an US multinational corporation. It was banned only recently following protest by ecologists.

Again, use of pesticides not only pollutes the ecosystem contaminating the soil and acqua system, but also pollutes the air. For, even a careful spray of pesticides can make it mix in the air as vapour. As a result, there are chances of poisoning of bees and other pollinators. Thus, apart from posing a threat to biodiversity affecting flora and fauna, chemical fertilizers and pesticides destroy the environment through air, water and soil pollution.

Chemical Fertilizers, Bio-fertilizers and Our Health

Pesticides and overuse of chemical fertilizers also affect our health by retaining the residue by food chain. There are evidences of residues of pesticide in vegetables causing chronic health conditions in human-beings such as cancer and other systematic dysfunctions. Residues in food and water extend the hazards to a much wider population than that affecting the farmers alone.

A twelve-year study by researchers comparing organically grown and chemically grown foods found that synthetic nitrogen fertilizer leaves toxic nitrates in vegetables at least 16 times higher than that found in vegetables grown organically. Nitrates and residues of pesticides have oncogenic or cancer producing elements. The element omega-3 found in vegetables protects us from heart disease, cancer and Alzeimer’s disease. But it is decreasing day by day in foods chemically grown. As is obvious, these diseases were not very common before the World War II when chemical fertilizers were not used.

Scientists have found that minerals containing in the food are crucial to our health. They keep us disease free. Mere vitamins and calories are not sufficient for our survival. But it has been established by studies that chemical fertilizers and pesticides destroy the essential minerals in crops and vegetables. In comparison to vegetables grown under organic system of cultivation these minerals are found much less in quantity in chemically grown vegetables. So it is argued that the foods coming from modern agricultural methods would only fill your stomach but you remain deficient in nutrition.

Again, studies carried out by researchers in the US and UK over last seventy years has come to the conclusion that organic fruits and vegetables contained 27 per cent more vitamin C than those chemically grown. Besides, they invariably contained more minerals and much less toxic nitrates.

Bio-Fertilizers and Bio-pesticides as Alternatives

Unlike the synthetic fertilizers, bio-fertilizers would have no obnoxious problems on our health and ecosystem. Bio-fertilizers include excreta of animals such as cow-dung, vermin-compost, dhanicha (green manure), organic wastes, crop residues, manure etc having biological or organic origin. Use of bio-fertilizers brings back the natural fertility of the soil without causing harm to earth-worms and micro-organisms. Besides, these fertilizers do not leave toxic residues in the food. Far from it, they would retain the natural minerals and the plant absorbs from the soil.

Bio-fertilizers like vermin-compost will increase soil fertility and prevent hardening of the soil. The vermin and living micro-organisms in the soil would also break the naturally available nitrogen from the air for plant use. Again, it will help allowing infiltration of rain water rather than causing water-logging. The use of bio-fertilizers will have little detrimental effect on ground water as there would be little nitrogen leaching into the earth contaminating the water.

Again, the use of animal and plant wastes in the field as manures will clean the environment. The organic wastes piled up everywhere can be used as compost reducing the environmental pollution. Besides, the deposits from ponds and aquatic systems can be used as bio-fertilizers and pesticides. This will clean the aquatic system while increasing productivity in the field.

As against the poisonous chemical pesticides bio-pesticides prepared from natural biological resources like plants and standardized microbes have no harmful effects. Local bio-pesticides like neem leaf and oil, karanj (derris indica) extracts and oil, cow urine can be used as insecticide and fungicide. Unlike the chemical pesticides they do not hit the non-target pests nor do they pollute the environment.

Preparations of neem include neem cakes, neem kernel, neem oil etc. Neem leaves and oil have been used by farmers in the Indian subcontinent since time immemorial as effective pesticide and preservative as well. Scientists in India, US and Europe have discovered many properties of neem as an obnoxious pest controller. Studies have shown that instead of killing pests at one go neem serves as a pest repellant and ovipositional deterrent, that is, pests do not spread eggs on plants applied with neem extracts.

Karanj oil and preparations made from it (now available with firms manufacturing them) serve as effective insecticide and miticide. All kinds of mites causing harm to plants like the red spider mites, scarlet mites, yellow mites etc are effectively controlled by preparations made from karanj.

Conclusion

The development of hybrid seeds of cereals, pulses and other crops though raised the productivity and supported the growing population of the country from starvation, since the sixties, it required greater use of chemical fertilizers, some of the compounds imported from developed countries. After two decades of the Green Revolution it was found that the soil was losing its fertility demanding more and more of chemical fertilizers for the high yielding varieties (HYV) of seeds to raise productivity, while pesticides were to be used in greater doses as pests developed greater resistance. Today the situation is so acute that productivity cannot be increased without surpassing the dangerous level of fertilizer use affecting health and environment, especially in regions like Haryana and Punjab where the per capita consumption of chemical fertilizers is very high. In view of the above hazardous effects of synthetic or chemical fertilizers and pesticides, the question arises, should we continue the use of HYV seed-chemical fertilizers technology? If not, what are the alternatives? In the present context, a system of organic farming using indigenous rather than HYV seeds with bio-fertilizers and local pesticides seems to be the only solution. It is time that both the Union and State Governments should arise from their slumber and promote and propagate the system of organic farming dismantelling the use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides.