If you are buying a new home, checking out a new apartment to rent, or entering a hotel or motel room…take a moment to stop and take a good whiff. According to New Jersey pest control experts, the scent of a bed bug infestation usually goes undetected to humans unless there is a bad infestation within the room or building. If you smell any of the scents described above, you should immediately head for the hills!
A recent study by researchers at Lund University and Mid Sweden University in Sundsvall makes scientists hopeful that the repulsive smell of bed bugs could eventually lead to their own demise. Here’s what they think…
Research has shown that bed bugs produce “alarm pheromones”. Adults and nymphs both have a distinct odor, but the nymphs (young bed bugs) have a more pungent smell than the adult bed bugs do. Behavioral studies have shown that the stench that is emitted by the nymph bed bugs is repulsive to the adult bed bugs. Researchers don’t believe that the repellant effect produced by the nymphs will be able to be harnessed and used kill adult bed bug infestations, but rather it could be used to make bed bugs more mobile so that pesticides will be more effective at killing the critters.
In other words…Imagine the creation of a pesticide that mimics the nymph alarm pheromone being sprayed on a home infested with bed bugs. If the research is correct in the study, the adult bed bugs would scurry away from the nymph alarm pheromone scent and unwittingly be subjected to pesticides that would lead to their demise! Sounds great!
You can review this interesting new bed bug study by reading PLoS One.
