American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN) - The Clinical Nurse Leader; American Association of Colleges of Nursing's White Paper on the Education and the Role of the Clinical Nurse Leader; American Association of Managed Care Nurses; American Board of Managed Care Nursing; AONE Institute for Leadership Research & Education
1 Female fleas cannot lay eggs until after their first blood meal and begin to lay eggs within 36-48 hours after that meal. 2  The female flea can lay 2,000 eggs in her lifetime.  The female flea consumes 15 times her own body weight in blood daily.
After about 2 days (range 2-21 days), depending on environmental conditions, the flea egg hatches torelease a first stage flea larva. This flea larva lives in the host's environment(it is part of the environmental stage of the fleas life cycle), where it feeds on fleadroppings (flea dirt) and dander.