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This was a great concern for some people during our last Affiliate Summit in NYC. But now we have a solution – The BedBug Patch.

Good Night, Sleep Tight, Don’t Let The Bedbugs …

The bedbug is sometimes called the “perfect parasite.”

“They bite you while you’re sleeping and the bites are painless,” explains entomologist Michael Potter. Potter, who works at the University of Kentucky and specializes in pest management, says there are several reasons bedbugs are more insidious than other parasites such as lice, fleas and ticks.

“Bedbugs don’t stay on the host — they scurry away to their hidden harborages that are far from obvious,” he tells Fresh Air’s Terry Gross. “And then on top of all of that, people react to bedbug bites differently. Some don’t react at all; others’ reactions are delayed until days or weeks later. So it’s a very efficient critter from the standpoint of doing its business and creating a lot of anxiety in terms of what’s happening.”

What’s happening when a bedbug bites a person is tricky, he explains, because initially a human may not even realize he or she has been bitten.

“They inject both an anti-coagulant, which allows a bedbug to extract blood from a human, and also a sort of anesthetizing agent, which allows the bite to be painless,” Potter explains. “That’s a good survival mechanism because if you woke up and felt the pain, not too many bedbugs would survive to feed another day.”

Potter says that not only have bedbugs survived, they’ve thrived. In recent years, the tiny critters have moved beyond homes and hotels — affecting many different types of facilities, including college dormitories, homeless shelters, nursing homes, office buildings, hospitals, schools and day cares, movie theaters, modes of transportation, laundromats, retail stores, libraries and camps.

Though bedbugs are certainly appearing more frequently than they used to, Potter says it’s important to have a healthy attitude about the infestation.

“We’re still in the early stages of bedbugs showing up in these less conventional places like clothing stores and libraries and movie theaters,” he says. “People should probably be unconcerned about encountering bedbugs in those types of places at this point. Is it possible? Certainly it’s possible. But what’s happening is the news media attention focusing on these isolated infestations here and there creates a huge concern among people and I think we have to keep a bit of this in perspective.”

Michael Potter is a professor of entomology at the University of Kentucky. He was previously the national technical director for Orkin, the world’s largest pest control company. Recently, Pest Control Technology Magazine named him one of the 25 Most Influential People in the Pest Control Industry.

Greg Hoffman Marketing Gorilla

Tags: Bites, Preventing