The starvation tolerance of bed bugs is astonishing.
At normal room temperature, adult bed bugs can survive without feeding for 2–3 months.
At lower temperatures (10–15°C), metabolic rates are greatly reduced, and survival time can extend to 6–12 months.
Laboratory records show that individual bed bugs can survive for over 400 days without a blood meal at temperatures near 0°C.
This extraordinary starvation tolerance has significant practical implications for control: for vacant houses or apartments, if there was a previous bed bug infestation, bed bugs may still be alive and waiting for a new host to move in, even if the room has been unoccupied for months.
This is why it is critical to perform a bed bug inspection before moving into a long-vacant dwelling.
The idea that "leaving a room empty for a few months will starve out the bed bugs" is unreliable — they may still be active the following spring, even after surviving a winter.
One advantage of heat treatment — under sustained temperatures above 45°C, the bed bug's metabolism dramatically accelerates, and they cannot enter a dormant state.