Bed Bug Biology & Control: Research, Behaviour & Professional Treatment | Dr Richard Naylor - Pest Perspectives

Hello and welcome to Pest Perspectives episode 15. It's crazy how many episodes have happened now. So I've only had so it's 14 guests now because the first episode was me talking about what the podcast is going to be. So I also needed to make a clarification, but the basis prompt points I said were in the descriptions of previous episodes. You can, you can redeem with the with basis prompt as I got it wrong, I'm sorry. There is 10 points available. However, per year you can only register six with the with the basis prompt, but all the others you can register as many as you want.

You can. So that's good. I just thought I'd clarify because I made a mistake. I'm human. So this week we have Doctor Richard Naylor on. How are you doing? I'm very good. Thank you. Thank you for inviting me. Good to hear. Now it's good to have you on. Now please could you introduce yourself, because I will butcher it if I'll get it wrong, I will. Yeah, I'm, I'm, yeah, Doctor Richard Naylor, I'm a, I'm a specialist in, in bedbugs and I'm an entomologist, but I've specialised in bedbugs now for like 202425 years, something like that.

And so it's been my been something I do pretty much every day for the last 20 years. Yeah. And I, and I'm director of the Bedbug Foundation, which is like a, it's a community interest thing. So it's a not, not-for-profit that supports people with bedbug, bedbug problems and helps people identify specimens and things. And then they also breed bedbugs and supply them to research labs and universities and, and, and we do product testing and that kind of thing. That's the commercial side of what I do.

That's through a website called Symex store. In fact, most, most of my customers are scent protection dog teams who buy buy bedbugs to train their sniffer dogs. So I've got, yeah, several 100 customers across Western Europe buying bedbugs for that. That's quite cool though. We'll come back to that because that's quite interesting, that is. So what got you from when you left school to get into bed? Books is it? Did you love insects as a child? Yeah, all, all things all, all. Yeah, certainly insects, but all, all kinds of things in the garden.

I had my, my parents made Natural History films. They worked with David Attenborough making their like living Sunnet and those kind of things. So, so I was brought up on Natural History and I spent my childhood out in the garden finding bugs and things. And that developed. I went to Sheffield University and I did a zoology degree. And then and then I sort of gravitated towards the entomology lab. And he had a pot of bedbugs. That was at the end of the 90s. My, the professor of that lab had a pot of bedbugs and they were, they were all like, no one had team bedbugs there.

And everyone knew them from the rhyme, from the bedtime nursery rhyme. But, but no one, no one knew what bedbugs looked like at the end of the 90s. And that's where I started working on them. He, he employed me for, I worked with him for about 15 years. In the end, I did my degree, master's, PhD and lots of research on bedbugs. Yeah. And then so my own business. So your degree it's actually in bedbugs. The first, my first degree is zoology and then my master's was in the was in bedbug, the bedbug immune system.

Bedbugs have a weird immune system because, because they have a weird mating system where the male stabs the female through the body wall and mates into her body cavity. So that's bad for females and they have some adaptations to, to cope with that. So that was my master's and then my my PhD was more about their dispersal behaviour, their ecology. Yeah, yeah. Why they actually move around. So you can actually get a degree PhD in Bed books. You can get a PhD in anything like the the, the key thing about PhD is it's novel research.

So you're like drilling down to the like coalface of what what we know about the subject and then find and then do some, do some experiments and find out a bit more. Yeah. Oh, that's interesting. I didn't know. I've not I've not got a PHDI didn't know you could do it on anything. But that's that's really sounds really difficult, but I suppose when you've got a passion for it. Yeah, yeah. Because you seem to, you seem to have a passion. For I do have a passion, yeah, yeah. It's been a big part of my life for a long time now.

So how many years at university did you spend between different levels of your courses? Was it quite a lot? Including my first degree from when I started to when I finished, I think it was about 15 years, something like that. Yeah. Oh, OK. Yeah, that's quite a long time. Were you working in between? Obviously. Or yeah. So, yeah, I was paid. They were paid back back then. Yeah, you could get, I was paid to do my PhD and I and I did some research positions as well, and I was paid for those. So they were, they were a job.

Yeah. I was a researcher. Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's quite, that's quite interesting. 15 years, but yeah, that is really interesting, that is. It's some cool field work. I went I went to Kenya a few times looking for the ancestors of bedbugs, which are which are bat bugs and they live in caves. And so we were explore exploring rural Africa, looking for caves with bats in to find the ancestors of the bedbugs. Did you find them? We did. Yeah. Afros, you did. They found a few different species, but Afrosimex were there in abundance, living on Egyptian fruit bats in caves in Mount Elgin.

Millions of them. Yeah. So did you pick up bats then? Yeah, we were. We were running into caves with butterfly Nets and and netting, netting the bats out of the air and then seeing if they were carrying any bugs around on them to handling all kinds of different bats. It must have maybe 10 or 12 different kinds of bats we captured. Yeah, that's very. That's very interesting. I mean, yeah, I wasn't expecting that story. That's quite interesting. Did you have to have, did you have to have like people with you?

Because obviously you're in the wilderness and it's well. Yeah, yeah, we, we had a with three of us, you know, we're just a little research group of three, my, the professor that I was working with and a postdoc and me and then we had like a cook, a cook with us and, and a driver. So there were, yeah, five of us in a Land Rover driving around Africa. Very nice. Adam Hall told you about. Says he wants some of them. Yeah. So.

So, yeah. Thanks for watching, Adam. It's good. Good to you. So we've bed bugs. One thing I've always wondered, how can it be that say we've had clients before where one person is in the same bed and gets bit but the other person never gets touched? Yeah, yeah, I hear that all the time. Yeah. And it's usually that the the woman gets bit and that like the the wife gets bit and the husband gets left alone. So there's there's. 2 possibilities and one of them is that apparently women in bed have a higher skin temperature, so they could actually be more attractive.

So it could be that they're being bitten. It could also be that they just react more because around 1/3 of people don't react to the bites. Also bed bugs, bed bugs really don't cope very well with arm hair. They kind of trip over and struggle through it. And so they find it easier to easier to feed on smooth skin and hairy skin. And and if you're if you're asleep in bed, you're much more likely to feel them moving over you. If you have have arm hair. There's been a research study from from Sheffield University actually that showed that you can detect parasites trying to feed on you more easily if you have hairy arms.

So it could be that the, the, the the blokes lying in bed just are aware of the tickle subconsciously and brush it off. But the, but the women get bitten more. Yes. There's a few possibilities. Yeah. That's interesting because I didn't, I didn't, I didn't know what what was happening there. But yeah, that that could be possible. Yeah, here all the time. Yeah, I must have had it 100 times. Yeah. I've had it loads of customers and they say oh I've not. Yeah. But yeah, I think I could react. Yeah. Children have to react the strongest because of their children have a really strong healthy immune system and so they tend to react.

The best tends to be the smokers have a very suppressed immune system and react the least. And then and old people, old people often don't react. And that can be a real problem in like in nursing homes. Nursing homes are terrible for bedbugs because lots of people living close together and it's warm and they're there all the time. And, and if the, if the old people aren't getting, aren't getting like reacting to the bikes, then the the infestation can get bad before anyone notices. And then it has time to spread and you end up chasing these infestations around for years sometimes.

That's interesting. I didn't know that all a lot of old people don't notice they've been bitten so that wouldn't that wouldn't help. Also Adam's Adam's saying he told me this on the podcast before he's saying this. They're now they are now known to transmit MRSAI believe that's. Yeah, I've heard. Yeah, I've heard of that. I mean, anything can transmit MRI, anything, anything, you know, teapot can transmit MRI, say you can't it, it's just, it's just moving bacteria around. But I have seen a study on that.

There's been lots of studies about the, the kind of vector potential for bed bugs and generally it's generally it's concluded that they're not really a, a major threat. The, the other thing that they can kind of theoretically transmit is Chagger's disease. Chagger's disease is normally transmitted by a much larger bug in South America. And, and in kind of the, the experiment was done in a cage full of mice. And if some of them had Chagger's disease and you've, and there was lots of bugs in the cage, then the bugs could transmit it between the mice.

But it's kind of an experimental situation. I don't think it's ever happened like naturally. OK, Yeah. So there's yeah, not, not too much disease potential hope. Yeah, yeah. No, well, it's not here anyway. It's not in the UK. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, Adam's just said mechanical transmission. Yeah, that's it. Yeah, Yeah. So we've you've probably answered this one, but we've bed books. How do they how do they locate their house? Is it just what you've said about women might be slightly higher temperature?

How do they, Yeah, locate their house. So they're, they're pretty much nocturnal. They're moving around at night. They'll they'll say they'll, they'll be hungry, they'll walk into your flat and they'll detect carbon dioxide and body heat primarily. And yeah, but once they get really just to see why they want to bite. But the primary ones are heat and CO2. And you can trigger that. You can trigger that with like with canisters of CO2 and traps that emit heat. And you can lure them in very successfully.

Yeah. So that's the main way. So they'll they'll, they'll, they'll become active when they detect the CO2 and then they'll find their way into your bed following the heat. And once they feed, they'll feed immediately, within, within a minute or so. And then they'll go and look for a good hiding place in the bed and they'll, they'll try and you know, ideally they don't want to move more than a metre from where they feed to where they are hiding, especially because they're going to be laying their eggs there.

So they don't let their, their nymphs when they hatch out to just over a millimetre long. So they have to be born fairly close to where they can, they have to hatch fairly close to where they can feed. So it's important that they have a good hiding place in a really convenient location. OK. Yeah, that kind of makes, that kind of makes sense. Yeah, right next to your food. Yeah, that makes sense. But isn't there a thing where I might be wrong where you could have bed bugs and then they can disappear for a period and reappear?

Is that is that correct? Sometimes you have like you can have a successful, like apparently successful treatment wipe out all of the bug. Yeah, but but one or two, one or two that you miss dispersed from the bed and they'll they'll avoid the treated areas. And so they might be roaming around the flat for a while or or roaming to the neighbours. Often a problem in hotels. I think they've got on top of it. And then three months later they'll be back in a different room. So they, so they can, you can kind of kill almost all of them and then a bit later they pop back up again.

That's kind of, that's kind of a common pattern for bed bugs almost, almost getting full control and never quite stamping them out. Yeah, headlights. I had the same battle with my kids when they were like when my kids would go to school getting headlights. You kind of. It was fine for the boys. Yeah, shorten the hair, 22 brushes and you're done. But the girl, man, it was a relentless like, yeah, relentless. I thought you enjoyed that one. You were like. The best time at school, I got some really good.

I got some really good macro photos of headlights, which I've still got. Yeah, I've got a really like powerful macro camera set up and I can take photographs of really tiny things and I've got some good ones. But then, yeah, that soon got that soon got boring when, Yeah, when I was constantly losing the battle here. Yeah, I thought you'd like something like that just to, because I know you like what you like. Bugs of all sorts. Don't. Yeah, it's true. Yeah. Especially the biting ones. Really. Yeah.

You. You've been bit out many Times Now, do you? Do you feel bad bugs? I don't like I can feed pots of them like I often have. Well, I have pots like I keep, I keep most of my bugs in pots like this. And I have, I have like something like 50,000 of them in culture and I, I can put like a mesh lid on and just elastic bandit to my arms and they'll, they'll fill up in about 5 minutes. And I won't feel that. I can might feel a general tingling, but that could be several 100 bugs in there. And I won't, I won't get any skin reaction and I won't really notice.

But if I'm doing tests in my test bedrooms, I definitely I'll be trying to get to sleep and I, I will feel that I'll feel the little tickle and the scratch as they're like climbing into the bed to bite me. Yeah. So I can, I'm aware of them where I'm having a go. Yeah. Right. Tell people what? Tell people you test beds and what you actually mean. A lot of people are just surprised now. So in in 2019 we built a cabin that I'm sitting in and it has two bedrooms set up. They just look like conventional bedrooms, except that there's cameras mounted.

I've got infrared cameras mounted on the walls and ceiling so I can see what the bugs do, and I've got carpets and skirting boards and bedside tables. They look very like standard for bedrooms and I used those for testing bed buggy products. And it initially, initially it was to develop an, a Wi-Fi bedbug trap called the OR Laura bedbug trap called the called the eye bug, which was with, with Russell IPM. But the, but once I had the facility, I found that there were lots of people that wanted that facility.

And so, so this week I've been testing a bedbug repellent for an American company and in a couple of weeks time, some like a Swedish company is coming over. In fact, that will be the second which company this year is coming over to test to test their their bed buggy products. And so I've tested traps and sprays and this there's a new thing called the exhale, which which releases CO2 to trigger bed bugs to forage. That's from a Norwegian company all sorts of things. Sorry I. Think. Yeah, I think Kill Jim is selling it.

That's it. I did a big study on apprehend which is like this fungal spore products, which is in the in the in the process of being registered. Who knows how long like HSE and actual will take to deliberate, but they're but yeah, it's it's getting close to being available for use in in Europe and UK. I've heard all. Sorts of things, yeah. My American friends and they, they really rave about it. Is it? Is it a good product? Apprehend yeah, I love it. It's the most amazing product, like the, the amount that you need.

So, so I, I was testing, I was releasing 20 adults and 20 nymphs into the into the rooms. And then I was monitoring mortality over 2 weeks and I'd almost always got 100% mortality within the first week, but I ran it around the Rep for two weeks. But it could, out of all of my treatment replicates, only one single bug survived past the two week mark and it was pretty much wiped everything out. But, but the, the best thing about it is how like practical it seems. It's it's implied with a little like electric battery powered paint sprayer and you need so you need I needed 25 millilitres to spray a bit like zone around the bed, like around spraying around the bed frame, around the bed legs.

And I sprayed the wall floor junction. You have to soak everything and you don't have to look for where the bugs are. You just want to get some like perimeters in between where the bugs are likely to be hiding and where where where they will have to feed. So like around the outside of the bed frame, around the floor, those kind of places. It was 25 millilitres. This this pops is 50 millilitres. So it's like half of one of those in an electric paint spray, just a little mist around the place and that and that was like that provided that, that, that was pretty much 100% effective for for the first two months and after the between the second and third month, it started to tail off.

So the resid residual like efficacy is also really amazing, much better than I find for any of the chemical things I've tried. Yeah, sounds great. Is it? Is it a toxic product? No, no, it's not No, no, it's a very, it's a very, it's a fungal spores and they're selected because they're entomopathogenic, which means they attack insects. And then there's lots of different strains of this, this the the species is Bavaria Bastiana and they pick a strain that's particularly good at killing bedbugs. Interestingly, it doesn't have a, doesn't have negative effects on bees and some other things like that.

Not really interest to ecosystems. And also it can't, it can't, it can't escape because the the fungus only completes its life cycle at very high humidity. So it, it'll kill all the bugs and if you collect them in and put them in a humid chamber, then they start sprouting mycelium. But it has to be, it has to be like more than 95% humidity in order for it to start, in order for it to produce like mycelium and then produce more fungal spores. So, so it's So what What you apply wipes out the bugs for about two to three months and then it's kind of completely inert then.

So yeah, it seems like a great product. It seems very safe to use. Certainly I haven't hasn't had any negative effects on me. That's really good to hear. I can't wait to Well, yeah, when it when it finally. Released US and Canada it seems popular there yeah yeah, that's good I hope it comes yeah, that's. Adam's saying it's similar to into care for mosquitoes because again, I don't know that one. Yeah, mosquitoes completely subject for me. Yeah, well, we don't do I don't I've never dealt with mosquitoes.

It's not not a thing we we're required to do. Apparently it's widely used like this. Bavaria Bassiana is widely used in crop protection, so it's already widely registered for. Yeah, for for crops, Yeah, crop protection. Oh, that's good to hear. So that that will be a good a good one to try out when it's finally released. Yeah, that does sound like because my people want more, more non-toxic products out there. It's a good product. It will be widely adopted, I would have thought. Yeah, but also, yeah, yeah.

And you could get you, because you need such a small amount. You can, if you were doing a hotel or something, you could have like a, you know, A1 litre bottle in your hand and one in your bag and you'd be able to do. Stacks of rooms, probably, probably, you know, you could the the battery fixing a little kind of bum bag on your waist and you have this little electric paint sprayer thing and you can just go to town. You're hardly carrying anything lightweight. Yeah. Seems very, very practical. Yeah.

Good. I can't wait for it to come. It sounds great. I keep hearing about it from. I got all LinkedIn and the Americans talk about it highly. Yeah, like it's not available here. No, no, it will be safely soon. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's and and the map biocontrol in Switzerland are the ones who are trying to get it registered for use in Europe and and the UK. It's an expensive like getting things onto the market. It's an expensive hobby. Yeah. You know, Yeah, it takes very time consuming and costs a lot.

Yeah. I've heard because a lot of our products are being for rats and that are being removed and new things are coming on and some of the some of the manufacturers at work from they say it can take 5 to 6 years sometimes. Yeah, yeah, very, very recently. And they said they're like in the business of finding new molecules that are effective. They do lots with mosquito control so that they have a, they have an army of chemists just developing new molecules. But they said when they find something that's good, it can cost €10 million and take 10 years to get that thing to a product on the market and it has to pass.

You know, there's a very good chance because it won't make it just because of it has to be, you know, human safe and environmentally safe and everything else, Yeah. OK. Adam's got a question. Can it be sprayed directly onto the mattress? Because most of our projects can't be. Yeah, I don't know. I I don't because it hasn't been registered yet. I don't know what in terms in, in registration terms, I don't know what you'll be allowed to do with it, but I would say it's probably not necessary. You could you, you only need to, you only need to create little barriers that they're going to walk over.

So normally the outside of the bed frame is fine or like the around the outside of a divan base is perfect across the back of the headboard, that kind of thing. If if you sprayed it on the mattress, it would presumably then be underneath a a sheet, so that might cut you. You might cover it up anyway, unless the person was sleeping directly on the mattress. OK, OK. I just asked it because he asked it in chat. But yeah, thanks for the comment. But yeah, looking forward to it does sound good.

So obviously, did you get loads of loads of work or calls when the whole Paris bedbug situation kicked off? Oh, yeah, Yeah. Really did that became a kind of global phenomenon. It was amazing. Yeah. For, for, I'd say for a month I had requests for interviews pretty much every day, which could be newspapers and TV and radio, everything. And it was completely global. It was like, yeah, it was no South Korea and Japan and and they were all reporting the same stuff about like the story they wanted to push was that if tourists go from Japan to to Paris or London, they might bring bed bugs back with them.

It was all very fear mongering. Yeah, yeah. They like, they like the headlines, yeah. Yeah, yeah, Especially headlines about, yeah, bad stuff happening for us that that makes them feel better about themselves. Yeah, yeah, I suppose she said that big bugs can. Well, they can be anywhere, can't they? Yeah. Yeah, we've had, we've had bedbugs. You know, the, the Romans had bedbugs and the, the ancient Greeks had bedbugs. They've really been around for a very long time. Yeah. And they go up and down and they like they, they do better in areas where lots of people live close together.

And they and they are more likely to spread if there's lots of movement of people. So it's not a new thing at all. Yeah, I don't, I don't know what triggered the, the, the Paris thing except that we did have a we had a similar thing like a media bedbug storm in 2012 when we hosted the Olympics. So I think that the reporters just get like, they just, they look for some kind of like Horror Story just to, yeah, cover another angle. They don't. They don't because I believe in Paris. They were on, they were on proper beds in the village in, in.

Oh yeah, yeah. That's right. They were all disposable beds, didn't they? Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's a bit weird yes, because I believe that bed the book bedsense product was actually in all the rooms. From what I was what I heard that all the product get old. I'm pretty sure that they the company advertised that they got all their products in the athletes rooms to help them. Yeah, yeah, I mean, it's crazy really. The, the, the generation time of a bed bug is like 2 months. So the, the, the duration of, of the Olympics isn't really long enough for bugs to yeah, sure, you can bring some in.

And, and, and the, the, the infestation isn't really going to grow to a size to and then spread significantly. It, it, it, it seems, it seems unlikely it would really. The number of people that would be affected seems, yeah, fairly inconsequential, really, Yeah. Yeah, I mean it's headlines and. Yeah, whatever. So during that, during that period, Guardian phoned me up and they said that they had they'd already done three stories on bed bugs this month and it's still trending really well. So they wanted to do another one and that's why they phoned me up to find out another story.

Well, so that the media is just like fabricating it out of thin hair. The analytics say we want more people are clicking. So we've got to keep giving them that. Well, exactly. It's like, it's like they like when they got the Asian Hornets that we're getting some over in the UK, but we can't call them Asian all it's coming the moon, but they call it something different. They Yeah. So I once I once heard it was a horse fly there which I got told by a customer a horse fly but it wasn't they were calling it like a vampire fly or something.

Oh, really? Yeah. It's sweeping the UK. I was like, no, I think that's fine. It's just a horse fly. Yeah, they like to dramatise books and things like that, don't they? Give it a new name. Make it scarier. Anything. Yeah, exactly. Anything that people are afraid of. Because people click what they're afraid of, don't they? They do, they do. You are right there. So obviously big books have been around a long time, have they? Have they evolved over time to now? Well, the, the group, the, the, the family that they've come from is the Siamese today and they're pretty much all bat bugs.

And but there hasn't really been much evolution from the the bat bugs to the human bedbug because the same species, some ex lectularis is you can still find living on bats. You can find them in there. There's a few places in Eastern Europe where where I know there are good, good roosts. I'm actually hoping to visit my friend in Czechia and we're going to take a trip hopefully to Slovakia. And you know some good places there where where you can hopefully find so much lexularious living on bats. So the same species is still still a bat bug, but it hasn't crossed over many times.

You can, you can collect bugs from the bats and bugs from the people and compare them genetically. And you can see that the, the, the transition happened somewhere between 5 and 20,000 years ago. It hasn't happened very often. So it's not happening all the time. They're not constantly spreading from bats to people. Well, it's just been a few a few isolated incidents that's kind of kicked off this human bedbug population. Yeah, OK, OK. Yeah, that's, that's interesting. We've obviously evolution is not, you say not not a lot's changed, but have they evolved in the sense of when you're treating bedbugs because everyone does not everyone just to preface that a lot of people do peripheral.

Yeah, in that sense, exercise. Spray. Yeah, Yeah, definitely. Yeah. In, in that sense, in the, in the kind of their adaptation to, well, resistance to insecticides, definitely they're morphologically they're, they look identical. You couldn't look at bed bug from a bat and the bed bug from a person see any difference because it's it's the time, the time frame is just too short. Thousands of years is too short. They've evolved over millions of years, but they can adapt to things like pyrethroid insecticides very well, all insecticides very quickly.

You know, they're very, they're very good at, it's it they, they're good at founding new populations. A single individual can lay some eggs and then breed with its own offspring. And they, they don't really suffer in breeding depression like mammals would. And so, so you only have to get like these positive mutations to to conquer like an insecticide and then and then that one can start a start a new population. Yeah, yeah. The resistance, the resistance problem is a significant problem. I do lots of resistance testing and they can now live on treated surfaces for, you know, they need exposure times of days and days in order for it to have an effect.

If it's if it's a dry residue, if you if you spray a bug with pretty much any insecticide, you can drown it. But if you're relying on that, like dry lasting residue, they need to be sat on it for days at a time in order for it to have any effect. That's the strongest ones. You know, the two the two strongest I think in the UK at the moment is Cimatrol Super and Central Forte. And they're both like 3540% pyrethroid. And if it the the in my in with the populations I collected most recently, I treated wooden tiles and I confined bugs to those wooden tiles.

And those were the only two products that killed anything in 36 hours of continuous exposure. All of the other products on the market at the time, I didn't cause any mortality in 36 hours. And, and, and those two killed 60% and the 40% that they didn't kill were kind of seemingly totally unaffected, walking around completely normally. And they'd obviously be the ones that would walk off the next door and start a new, new infestation again. Yeah. OK that's that's what point why I was asking that is because I remember on the beauties and beasties you meant.

I thought I might be wrong. Correct me, did you mention that beds are laced in pyrie frauds anyway? Yeah, yeah, yeah. That was staggering to hear. But apparently it's been completely common in completely standard across the like, like hotel bed manufacturing industry for for years, decades maybe. I've met a few like large scale hotels and they do standard and they and they contacted me because they were looking for an alternative because they've kind of come to the realisation that it's not working.

So this is just hotel beds, not not normal beds. Yeah, it's. Yeah, the big kind of hotel, the van beds are manufactured very often and the mattresses as well out of pyrethroid impregnated fabrics. So it's completely, completely obvious that there'd be resistance issues because it's in the environment all of the time. And so there's so much exposure that you just select out all the weak ones and you only have a resistant population. It's crazy to me. This is absolutely crazy that they're lacing pyrethor.

It's making everyone's job harder as well. Yeah, yeah, It's the same as antibiotic resistance. Yeah. You've got to use these things really sparingly or they just don't work. Yeah. Have you had any discussions about them stopping them doing it or they're not but. It wasn't. It was a in the UK, it was a, it was hip hypnosis. Apparently the biggest bed bed supplier for like premiering and those kind of things. And, and one of one of the directors of that company is also called Richard Naylor. So it was, it was fun going to meet him.

And so I talked to him about it. But they, they have stopped doing that for that reason. They they figured out for themselves, I think, that it wasn't working. And then I had a very similar conversation with an Italian bed manufacturer on a similar kind of scale. Yeah, Yeah. Did I agree? Did I agree with you? Well, yeah, they come to their own conclusions and they're contacting me looking, yeah, trying to trying to find an alternative solution. Yeah. So, so they, they're well aware that it's not working.

And so hopefully there perhaps there is going to be a change in the tide, but it's very difficult for them to, it's difficult for them to move away because because they lose a kind of marketing point. If everyone else is selling mattresses and beds that have some like impregnated stuff that makes it bed bug proof, you can't. It's very difficult to be the bet though. Like the one manufacturer that's not doing that anymore. OK, is that how they sell them? Man, do they say it's big? They actually say it's big bug.

Yeah, Yeah. That's why they do it. Yeah. It's a marketing point for the for the hotels, yeah. Surely it's surely that claim must be false. Yeah, it's getting more false over time. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Maybe it used to? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it stops. Yeah. You start to sound silly if if you're trying to convince the hotels, but they're saying, but look at all of our bedbugs, you know, Yeah, you've got a. Good point there. You have. Yeah, you've attracted quite a few people tonight. We've got Andrew Cynitsky from America as well.

You have. And the building. Looking about Bavaria, Yeah, yeah. But yeah, that's it's interesting fact, but I'm happy to know. I'm happy to find out that your average bed isn't laced with it. Yeah, not, not domestic beds. Yeah, as far as I know. Yeah, as far as I know, I've only talked to the hotel bed manufacturers. Yeah. Well, that's where the biggest problems are, in hotels more than anything, but they are everywhere. But yeah, they are predominantly high percentage are in hotels and being beaten there.

It's all the places where lots of people are sleeping close together and lots of movement of like, you know, lots of lots of changes of guests. You know, hostels even even like remote mountain huts have major problems with bedbugs often because they have backpackers staying there like one night, you know, one night at a time over the summer months. And that's a great way to move bugs around. People then sleeping close to their bags, high turnover people, people staying close together. You get it.

It's a problem in in aeroplanes, particularly in the where the cabin, where the where the cabin crew sleep is. It's always where people sleep. There seems to be. Yeah, yeah. Sleeper trains. Yeah. People sleeping close together. Big problem with bed bugs. Is there any say? Might be a silly question? I don't, I don't. I'll ask it. Like the bed bug issues we have in England, UK, is the problem the same everywhere or if some countries got high worse problems with red books? Or is it just case by case?

So big cities generally, you know, every country has big cities pretty much big, big cities have problems with bedbugs. They're not so much of a problem in rural areas. But I, I was talking to a friend recently in, in Zimbabwe, Zambia, Zimbabwe. They're, they're apparently having big problems with bedbugs in Zimbabwe. And in fact, they constantly contacted me because they wanted to know which species they have. And the one that they have is the tropical 1. So it looks, it looks really similar, but there's a, there's a temperate 1A tropical one, and they're both on the increase.

They've both got resistance to insecticides. Yeah, You know, it's the same, the same kind of factors help both of them. So when you we've got lots of movement of people, big cities, people living close together, then the bugs increase too. OK, because I had Francis from Hatch Pest Control and from Nigeria and he meant he mentioned bedbugs are a real big problem in Nigeria because. Yeah, yeah. And that's probably also that they do. They do have both species in in, in Africa. You can find some exilectularis, the temperate 1 and some exemitris, the tropical one in like Co occurring in Kenya and probably a bunch of other countries in Africa.

So I don't know which one his would be, but it could be some exemitris. It's a bit. It's especially a problem if you're if you have people living in mud huts where they can like live in the in the walls. You know, they have the they make the walls out of sticks and then cake them with mud and it just provides a million places to hide. And it's that nice rough texture that lets let's bugs climb around all over it. They don't like these like shiny plastics and metal and things that makes it quite difficult for them.

But mud walls with holes in perfect. Yeah. In a nice warm climate. Yeah. Oh. It's perfect breeding craft. Then they can find their way back in the mud. Yeah. Can't spray anything. Then there. Yeah, you're right, You're right. So we we've, we've obviously bed bug treatments. Do you find that obviously you do testing of a lot of products, Do you find that heat treatments are very effective? Do you? Yeah. I mean, I think, I think the thing with heat treatments is it it takes some, it takes takes some skill with the person who's using it.

They have to, they have to understand something about the structure of the building and whether there's cold, cold spots around windows or whether whether adding heat is going to push bugs from, you know, your wall cavities into the neighbouring rooms, that kind of thing. So it's not, it's not, it's not idiot proof, but if you're, if you're competent with it, yeah, it's brilliant. They they definitely, I want to say definitely, it seems unlikely that they would ever become resistant to that. You know, if you can warm them up above about 45°, then they're pretty much guaranteed to die.

Yeah. OK. I just thought I'd ask because you're obviously the bed bug expert. I've never, I've never, I've never done hate treatment. We don't have that kind of kit, but I know there is firms that have got them. Yeah, yeah, I've, I've only, I've been a family on the wall in a bunch of heat treatments. I I, I don't handle the kit myself, but I've been a family on the wall on some really big heat treatments where they have like lorries parked outside with, with diesel generators heating up water and then pump piping it in through big orange tubes into heat exchangers.

So these are, this is really big kit. The whole kit arrives on two big lorries and then and then much smaller things where you have like electric heaters in rooms or bubble treatments where you have like a pop up gazebo, insulated gazebo that you just put over the bed. Yeah. But on all scales, if you do it for if you do it, you know, carefully the temperature probes to identify all the cold spots and you do it for long enough, then it's it's definitely an effective way to to manage your bed bugs.

Yeah. Good to have you. Have you been on any of any jobs? Where I've heard in London sometimes the the heat, the entire building. Yeah, that's probably quite a big lorry. Ones, yeah, those big lorry ones were that that was in that was in a Premier Inn. It's probably fine to say it was a long time ago that was in a Premier Inn and they heated up like several, several floors, basically a wing of it. So they have lots of lots of heat exchanges and you could you could go in that, that you, you could go in and walk around in there, but it was it was hot, it was uncomfortable.

They were they're aiming for like 50°, so you don't want to be in there too long. And if you touch anything metal, it kind of burns you. You would, wouldn't it? Yeah, yeah. But it was I for that one, I, I took tubes of bedbugs. There were bugs that were sealed into ventilated tubes and I hid them in all the places I could think of, like inside the bed base and under the wardrobe and under the carpet and between the mattress and the bed base. And they were all dead in like 2 hours. And that heat treatment was going on for, I think, I think about 12 hours, 1212 hours of being hot.

And then they would have like a slowly cool down period. If you're, if you're doing those massive like structural heat treatments, you've got to like bring the temperature up quite steadily and then cool it down quite steadily. And you've got to make. Don't go over. If you hit about 5560°, then the melamine edging starts to peel off or the furniture, that's the first thing to go. But you can cause all sorts of problems. Yeah, you can. You can evaporate lots of water from like the toilets and things and steam the room and that can make the tiles fall off the wall.

So. So yeah, not to just cause masses of damage, yeah. Yeah, I didn't think of things like that. You're right. You could. Yeah. Yeah, I'd never thought. I suppose you've got to take all them into consideration. I think I just thought you heating it up, it was done, but now you've got to slow go up, then you've got to go down in temperature. I didn't think of any of them, but yeah, they're great points. I didn't know that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But so the, the, the gun treatment, they, yeah, they become experts in that one thing.

And you know, they, they, they know all the, all the limitations. Yeah. So there's firms that literally just do bed book treatment. There is. Yeah, yeah. There are the big pest control companies, generally the big pest control companies in the UK that do it like hiring that service from a big firm. Yeah, that specialises. Yeah. And that would be subcontracted, don't they, to somebody? That's it, yeah. Yeah, they do. What do you think about is what do you think about these Steam, these Steam treatment kits?

Like the Cymax Eradicator. Yeah, I said I've tested some of those. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. They're good too. So there's no like there's no residual, obviously. So you kill, you can kill everything that you hit. You have to go slow and steady. You can blast it into all the cracks and crevices. But when I've played with those, it's it's it's annihilated the bugs really fast. But Pulte actually like commissioned me to, we collect some macro video of, of steaming in action and it, and it was really difficult because the this, well, if you, if you're trying to film stuff and you fill up the room with steam, you can't see anything.

So that was a challenge. And then by the time the steam clears, everything's dead. So. So it was, yeah, we got some, we got some good shots. But yeah, it was, it was very effective at killing bugs. Yeah. That's good, I just thought I'd ask because I've never thought about buying it but I've never had enough. Yeah, yeah. People say that the the struggle some people have with it are like things like having to top up, like does it, do you have to cool it down to refill it or? Yeah, they're kind of you can't, you can't just, you can't just keep going and going and going.

At some point there has to be a cool down and fill up phase, that kind of thing. And and there's no and because there's no residual, if there are any bugs that are dispersed to or they're coming from the neighbours or something, you have to keep that in mind. You could you could add something that has some residual efficacy like like diatomaceous earth or silica dioxide. These these are quite good for for offering lasting residuals so your bed doesn't get reinfested again straight away. But you have to without with those ones.

They, they're very, that they absorb moisture from the air. So you don't want to like steam the thing and put down your DE because your DE will suck up all the water and then be less effective. So you have to make sure it's like aired out and dried out and then you can apply your your desiccant dusts. So you're looking at really, to do that, you're looking at a day's work. And yeah, you're looking at a day's work surely to do. That, yeah, or, or at least yeah, or some time in the middle for it to, for it to, yeah.

Or make maybe a return visit the next day to apply the dust or something. If you're doing it that way, I think steam plus dust is quite a good option if you're struggling with resistance issues with the chemicals, then then steam for your knockdown and some dust for the lasting residual. There's a good way to go. I know lots of people that do it like that. In fact, in, like in Scandinavia, they've they've really moved away from chemicals more than we have here. And that's pretty much all they do, do, kind of heat treatment, steam and dust.

Yeah. OK.

That's I said. Is that chemicals of all pest control or just with insects? Is that just red books or is that all that? I, I got, I got the impression that they have generally a culture of being more wary of insecticides and more people not wanting insecticides sprayed around their houses. And I think, I think fewer things are registered for use there. But the big the big pest control companies that work there do most of their bed bug work with, yeah, heat, steam and desk and dust. No, I totally get it.

I tell you, It's the world's becoming more eco conscious and chemicals are putting out and that's probably why they've made that decision. It's I actually know every more, more regulations are coming in and stuff's getting tighter with what products on the market. So I'll probably get why they've made that decision I have. So what what would you say if you if you were a pest controller, what would your best method be To to to I'll just go back again. What would your best method be to find if you've got bed bugs?

Find if you've got them for, for me, I would just do a visual inspection. I, I, I think with some, with some experience, you can look at a bed and have a pretty good idea where the bugs are going to hide. And it'll be different for different types of bed, but they are quite predictable. And, and it won't, you won't necessarily find the bug itself straight away, but they do leave a lot of those faecal spots in really like classic places, like really predictable places. And so, so it so, So what? So I do go like I, I get, I get asked to do expert witness stuff.

People say I'm being bitten and there's some kind of some kind of dispute about whether or not there's bugs there. And for me, I tend to do it by visual inspection. I just take everything apart and have a really good look and I take photos. But I do think that I think the centre detection dogs do do a great job, but they're, they're like, they're their specialists are being able to search rooms very rapidly. So they can, they can search a room in maybe 5 minutes or something. And some of them do it in less than that, which means that they can, if there's, if there's a guest complaint of bed bugs in a hotel, they can search that one and the ones either side and above and below, or they can search the whole corridor and they can help to pin down where, which parts of the building have a bug problem.

And in hotels in particular, the bugs take the bugs can be inside like big hollow bed bases or behind fixed headboards. And they're, they're just awful for manually searching because you can't, you can't get, you can't get at them, especially if the, if the headboard screwed to the wall and there's bugs behind it, you just can't check. So you have to take everything apart. But a dog can stick his nose behind them and has a pretty good and you know, you might not get everyone unless he's very close, but he has a pretty good idea of where the bugs are hiding.

So so they can. So even if the bed bed headboard is screwed down. Yeah, yeah, they'll just run that. They get trained to run their nose often the, the handlers like guiding them with his hand and the dog will follow his nose like along the edges and upper side of there and across their curtains. And, and so you can get the dog to, to, to send his nose along the bottom of the headboard or along the top of the headboard or inside the bed base. And they're pretty good. Yeah, yeah, I've seen them. I've seen them do some really impressive things, find really small numbers of bugs in like, you know, some with all the windows open, there's lots of air flow.

Yeah. So some some dogs are really remarkable. Yeah. But they can what they can find, Yeah. I asked you that question because I knew you were the big bed bug bed bug detection up because I was Oh, dogs. I think it's pretty cool. I've not seen it in action. I've watched podcast with people talking about it and it it seems like quite a good a good method. I suppose the hotels when say they'd say all your guests were out one day. Yeah. I don't know how it worked. You could do a sweep of all the floors.

Yeah. And quite rapidly. Yeah, you could. Yeah, they, they use them on like they use them on these big like cruise ships because the cruise ships have docked for such a short time, you know all they have hundreds of hundreds and hundreds of people, thousands of people. And they all get off and then you've got like 4 hours to turn the ship around so you can get in and you can search all the rooms. You just couldn't do that manually. Or they've got like wood screwed to the walls. It's too, too much to disassemble to have to have any chance of finding where the bugs are.

But dog, dogs, I do it. Yeah, it's a. It's a it's a good method. I think it's an interesting, it's an interesting method. It is. It's it's It works. Yeah, it does. Yeah. Yeah, planes are another one. You know, the planes often have like honeycomb, like foam seats. They try and make everything as lightweight as possible by having holes in everything, which provides millions of places for bugs to hide. But. And so you can't, you can't, you can't look in all the places where they could be hiding, but you can bring dogs on.

And so dogs are regularly used on planes. And yeah, I know someone very well. He who that's his pretty much his main business. Yeah. Oh, nice. I mean, oh, they're matching on planes. Do they do they do they fumigate instead of doing the heat treatments on planes when they find them? Normally if they get hit on a plane seat, they'll unbolt that seat, lift it off the plane and take it away, and then probably put it in a heat tent. Yeah, but it'll be processed off the plane and they'll just swap in another one.

Yeah. All about the quick turn around times, yeah? Yeah, that is, I've got the other question here, which, which aspects of the bedbug biology, which do you think is is often misunderstood by us pest controllers? Aspects of the bedbug biology. I don't know if what do I think that you can misunderstand. It's hard for me to say what you would misunderstand. So I know that I get lots of, I get lots of public emailing me. I spent a few hours a day responding to emails of people who either have bedbugs or think that they have bedbugs.

And often the people who think that they have bedbugs have had multiple treatments for bedbugs and, and the, the problem still, they're still getting bites or whatever. And it turns out that it's not bed bugs at all. It's it's like carpet beetles or something. Carpet beetles is probably the single biggest cause of people thinking they have it have bed bugs. And it's because it's because they like the, the larvae are hairy and that if you and that they, they're one of the most common insects to find in the bedroom, that they'll be in the like dust and debris around, around the bed or sometimes hiding in the bed frame.

And if one of those hairy larvae gets mixed up in your bed clothes and you end up sleeping on it, you'll wake up with a whole bunch of things that look like in their bites. People react differently, but you can end up with lots of red red lumps that that look like insect bites. And people see. Stuff on TV about bedbugs, Everyone's first thought if they've got insect bites is it must be bedbugs. And very often the pest control level and say Oh yeah, probably is bedbugs, I'll spray some insecticide all over your bed and it.

And it never was. And that I, I come across those situations pretty much daily. Yeah. So just identifying which things are bedbugs, yeah, would probably be the best one, yeah. Well, you are supposed to identify because you're all about what we know as the woolly bear stage. Yeah, yeah, that's right. But that's what we call it, the woolly bear stage. Yeah. It's not one of them. Yeah. You might not find the bug itself. They are really common. So which, So I identify lots of specimens for people and it's something like 20% of the specimens that we get sent every year are carpet beetles.

Carpet beetles or larvae. Yeah. So they're, so they're one of the most common insects to find in the bedroom. And because they can cause people to have these, these skin reactions, they're like the number one thing for making people think that they've got bed bugs. But there are all sorts of other things. And like lots of people like just have a rash all over there to to I think this was this morning or yesterday evening. This morning, someone just had like sent me a photo of their, their chest and belly and they had maybe 50 or 50 or 60 red blotches, a bit like mosquito bites all over their torso.

And the pest control would come in and said, yeah, probably is bed bugs better spray or better spray your bed for bed bugs. But obviously if they if they've suddenly got 50 bed bug bites, that of going to find tonnes of evidence bedbugs, you know, they're hiding somewhere nearby. They're as big as an apple seed or you know, a small apple seed. You only have to have a quick look. You can't, you can't not find that many bedbugs in a bed and all black debris and car skins and eggs that they leave behind.

So, so it should be obvious. Those things should be obvious. So, so I guess the I guess my answer to your question then would be, yeah, identifying which things really are bedbugs. Well, it's true because we're obviously I've had it before where we we have people obviously that think they've got them, but they've actually got delusional parasitosis and they show you loads and loads of bits of fluff and skin debris and they're actually telling you that bed bugs. I'm saying you haven't. Yeah. You've got to learn how to deal with it.

You've got to be. Yeah, they're difficult. They're so difficult to deal with. Like they're so much harder to deal with than the people who actually do have bedbugs, because those people, you can find them and treat them and then they're gone. But some of these people have this going on for, for 15. No, no, even the, the, the most crazy one was recently a lady and her husband came to my house and she's been going on like she's had this problem for 40 years. She thinks that she visited a farm when she was a child and brought something back, whether it was bugs or mics or something.

And now she's infested, which of course, doesn't. It doesn't make any sense. You can't be infested by something for 40 years and never find, like, concrete evidence of what it is. But she's she's absolutely certain. Yeah, it's so difficult. It's really hard because I've had it sometime, we've had it sometimes where the ladies actually rang us after she had a right go at us, just called, you know, a call. I charge, yeah. And she says, oh, you could see them all over my crawling, all over my face.

Not bed bugs or whatever they were. Yeah. But there's nothing crawling out of your face. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, you charlatan. Yeah, no. We just said all that. We just charged you a call out price. They're not saying we don't do it, but there is firms out there that you just say you got something can they'll just spray? Yeah, they will. Yeah, yeah. It reinforces it like I always, I always talk to these people because, because they, because they seek me out, you know, they find me on the, on the, on the web.

And so it's so, so every year I have interactions with these people and very often they've had a whole load of treatments for, for, for bed bugs or some pest in their bedroom. And that and that's, that just reinforces it. You know, I've had, I've had 9 treatments and they've still not managed to get rid of them. But that's because they never were there in the 1st place. They just needed the pet like pest controllers to consistently say there is nothing there for we're not going to treat. Yeah, yeah.

It's really, it ruins people's lives and it's really hard to know how to help them. And you're definitely the the enemy. They they see you as totally incompetent if you have a look and say there's nothing here. Yeah. It's a difficult area in pest control because it's not something you're actually within the job trained to deal with. No, but you, you're not allowed to spray unless there actually is a problem with any insect. Yeah, it's hard when they're telling you, nearly crying to you. Yeah, yeah, you can't.

You can't find anything, but you just got to learn how to deal with it. You have. You've got to be careful at the same time as well. Yeah, take. A firm like your account. Yeah, yeah, make them. I always try and make them aware of the, you know, I tell them straight up now, I used to, I used to kind of go along with it more, but I tell them about this condition. There's a recognised psychological congestion called delusional parasitosis. It almost always, I think only one time in 25 years have I met a bloke who had it.

All the others were women or they were all older women, probably like sixties, 70s, usually clean freaks. You know that the house is Immaculate. They, they and they're collecting every speck and, and they, and they, they're intelligent in that they're, you know, they're literate. They're reading everything on the Internet, which doesn't help at all. Yeah. And they just go, they just go completely dual alley of it. And it's really, it's really difficult to help them. But you have to like, yeah, be very patient.

Tell them what it is that don't spray for. Don't spray just in case. You know, maybe it is, maybe it is bed bugs. We'll just spray to be on the safe side. That doesn't help at all. No, because they've confirmed that they've got Yeah, you may not have. Yeah. And and it must be even harder to, you know, if you, if you treat and don't get rid of it because because it wasn't ever there, then it must, it just sort of makes them think it must be even even tougher and even even more resistant strain or you know, I've had 9 treatments and they're still not gone.

It must be a really tough bug. Yeah. Yeah, but it doesn't. No, Yeah, I think you're saying it's some people get yeah 9 treatments. I imagine that's a lot of money. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that as well. And, and sometimes spending a lot of money on things like like buying the the Polti Cimax Eradicator. So I've spoken to a few people that have bought those like as private people, you know, they're like 6 to 800 lbs and they're and they and so that's they're buying, buying like the professional kit in order to try and deal with the problem that doesn't exist.

I've. Never heard that, that's a new one on me. Yeah. Now if I've come across that a few times, including including in the last couple of weeks, yeah, that's a new one. On me, no, I've not heard of that. I'm sure if I've learned something from that, I've never heard of them actually doing that. But yeah, it's it's. I've known people to treat themselves with insecticide and bleach. I've known people to make their like home environment like people who need like home support from carers have made their home environment so toxic that the carers won't come into the home because there's too much chemical over everything.

They just seem they feel like it's not safe.

Yeah, I feel sad about. That's really bad. Yeah, yeah, it's really, it's really heartbreaking trying to help these people. It really is. Yeah. And I and I spend so much more time trying to help those people than the people who actually have bedbugs where you're like, yes, it's bedbugs. You know, either go and get professional help or do do this. Yeah, so much Yeah. I've driven, I live about 3 to 4 hours from London and I've driven to London a couple of times just to go and just to go and talk to these people, like search everything carefully and say there definitely, definitely, definitely aren't any bed bugs here and there never has been.

There's no faecal spots or anything else. Just to try and let them like calm down, you know, OK mate, maybe. And and and actually, and it does sometimes work. So it does, yeah. It sometimes. Works. Yeah, it does. One. Yeah, there was one lady who who'd been struggling with this for 15 years and I just said there is nothing here. And then. And then I've heard from a few times since that she has managed to like somehow mentally come to terms with the fact that this is this was something cooked up by her imagination and wasn't real.

Yeah. So it's somehow released her from it, but that's but she but she's like a like a, a rare one. Lots of them I don't think I have any positive benefit for.

That's one nice story. That is because you're more you're more qualified than as pest controllers when it comes to bed bugs, because you're more qualified than us in terms of knowing what you. To do with. About my little niche, yeah. If you read lots about me on the Internet and then I come to their house and say they're definitely not here, hopefully that, you know, for some people that's enough to just think, OK, maybe it isn't then. Yeah, sometimes. Yeah, but. Is there any new big developer? Obviously you can't talk about it.

Is there any new technologies in terms of detection for bugs or in terms? Of what? Sorry. In terms of detecting them and. Detecting so there's a few companies working on bedbug monitors and and and and pheromones. There's still a lot of research into into the attractants. And I think there's a lot of I think there's a lot of potential. I've never found any if I, if I use, if I take a solvent, if I take the, The Dirty paper from these culture parts and it gets really that isn't attractive. It works much better than anything that's commercially available, which make, which makes me think there's scope for improvement in the things that are commercially available.

So, and, and I know of, I know of a few companies that are working on, yeah, working on attractive. And so there's that and, and there's a couple of companies that are developing traps. There's a, there's a, there's a company in Sweden called Simula, which are two, two engineering students from KTH University. And they've built like a big tall thing. It's about two feet tall. And it has ACFU canister in and it has, it has a pitfall track around the bottom and it has a heat source. And it's very like it's very techie and programmed and it has cameras in there that can that use.

Yeah. They're able to identify bed bugs from other things, you know, AI algorithms to identify what bugs are there. And, and they're the, the machine itself is, is like their, their, their, their business model is to rent out these machines to people who need it. So, so someone might get back from holiday and think that they've got some bikes and they can rent the machine for a couple of weeks and it'll just, it'll just release the last of CO2 and it's warm. And I had amazing results in my test rooms.

It caught every night. It caught the most when I stood it on the bed, but it caught anywhere in the room and and and the tank was it. It's only so big because of the CO2 tank, but that means it lasts lasts a couple of weeks if they like, if they're careful with it. So that's so that's good. That's they probably only have enough units to service Sweden at the moment. But if the if it takes off, it might go further afield. Is it the the exhale lot? So that's that's from Scartech. There's a Norwegian company.

They're the ones who who have this like like CO2 canister on a timer that that works in a similar way. And you can, you can use that in conjunction with other traps. And I think that they're developing a trap to go with it. Ideally, if you're having something that's producing CO2, you need a trap with heat because because the CO2 is very good at activating bedbugs. So they come out of the hiding places and roam around, but they're not really attracted to the CO2. It just sort of, I think there's too much airflow and it just sort of flows around in the room and the bugs will run around all randomly.

If you then put a trap in the middle, a pitfall trap in the middle with some heat in it, then they just, they get sucked in like a magnet. So that's, that's, that's the kind of winning combination CO2 to wake them up and heat to lure them in. Yeah, there's some trap of PayPal there, isn't there? Developing some clever, clever, clever devices for us. Yeah, yeah. So it's still a very active, Yeah, still a very active market. Yeah, there's a lot, lots of different groups developing things. Have you tried?

Have you tried, but have you tried the book Sense product? Have you tried that one? Yeah, I've tried that one. Yeah, I, I, I think of the of, of all the sticky traps, it's, it's the most intelligently designed in, in that has the nice, like it's got a nice grippy plastic and it's black like black, black traps always outperform white traps, but they're books like dark crevices and they don't like white and they don't like shiny. And so, so the bug sense thing is intelligently made in that, in that it's of a like a plasticky material that they can walk on and it's dark and it's a nice crevice so they can squeeze in and it glues them from the, from the top side.

So, so traps with glue on the bottom, they tend to run onto the glue and then get the front legs stuck and then stop and then reverse themselves off. And so they, they're much better escaping from that kind of trap. But with the, with the glue on the top side, the bug tends to run up and get stuck from above and then he can't do anything about pulling himself off. So, so that's, so that's all good. Well, I do think that they could improve their lure because I, I haven't haven't found in my, in my test setups, in my arenas and in my rooms, I haven't found much evidence that the lure helps, but it's a it's an active area.

Maybe in a year there will be better lures on the market or they'll have developed theirs further. Yeah. I mean, I've tried it and it's what it's worked for. The customers have had, but we don't do tonnes, tonnes and tonnes of I've read books jobs. We, we, we do not as many as a lot of some firms do them all year round. We do, but we tried it. We we like it, but you're, you've got better test situations, I suppose. Just release them all. Yeah, yeah. I used to start, I used to just be 10 bugs. I used to release 10 bugs, leave them overnight, collect them all in and I've just, it's just got scaled up and scaled up and scaled up until I'm now releasing, yeah, release 100 bugs or leak or let with one of the rooms, I just let the infestation grow.

So I have something very similar to a natural infestation. And sometimes I have to sleep in there to like nourish it so that they so that they keep growing and laying eggs and being just doing all the things that bugs do. And then I can put monitors in there and test it. In a very kind of real situation. I don't have much success in my in my rooms. Generally I find that if I release bugs on the floor, they'll climb into the bed and they'll bite me and then they'll hide in the bed. And so if I put traps on the floor and the bugs are already in the bed, they don't come down to the floor very much.

And so the probability of catching 1 is pretty low unless, unless the traps there. If I release the bugs on the floor and the traps already on the floor, I have a slightly better chance of catching them. But by the time they're in the bed, there's little activity on the floor. But it of course depends on what the what your bed that is. Like if you've got a divan base that's sitting on the floor and then no, not many places to hide in the bed, then the bugs will sometimes hide A ground level or behind the bed or buying the skirting or something like that.

Yeah. OK, OK. It's it's all. It's all, it's all fun. I'll tell you one thing I like. I should have invited Alex Wade on to talk with you because he would, he would. He loves, he loves, he loves looks. And as you can remember from the beauties and beasties, it was mainly Alex talking, wasn't it? Yeah, Yeah. You're almost like I can't believe you sat you let you let bed bugs in your bed. But I'll get on with them guys. Really. Well, I don't, but so it doesn't scare you releasing bed bugs into your bed thinking oh, no, I'm going to get bit.

You can. No, I just, I mean it did. Yeah, it did. It did, I just overcame it. So, so I've been doing this pretty much every every week since 2019 when I built the cabin. So it's normally been once a week, sometimes it's been twice a week. And then for the last week it was every night just because I had a project that I just had to get through. So it was relentless. And but, yeah, in the in the early stages, I I'd with subconsciously in my sleep, I'd just be like scratching and swatting things and I'd wake up in the morning and I'd killed all my bugs or like 10 of them.

And now I can go to sleep and just somehow, somehow that bit of my brains just turned off. And it don't it's. Yeah, you just overcome it. If you do the same thing in a time, you just overcome it. Yeah, fair enough. Fair enough. At least you just start with. You were a bit scared. Yeah, it was, it was hard to. Yeah, it was. It was hard to it was it was hard to lie there with my eyes closed and feel a little tickle and wonder if wonder if it was a bug or not, not want to scratch it because not want to kill the bug.

And so you just like yeah, it was it was a mental challenge early on. Fortunately, it's not so much anymore. Yeah, it. Is sometimes because you can be like, you can, you can do a, you can do a bad bug job and sometimes think after even though you check yourself. Yeah, psychologically like, and there's no extra, there's no extra. There's nothing there. Yeah, yeah, just because I've been in there. Same with fleas. You can like, there's nothing there. But whenever. Whenever. People ask me about my job, they often start scratching.

They probably do. What do you do?

So that's obviously when you test new products, that's what you do. You put them into your, your, your test rooms and you test. Is that how you do all your all your tests? Yeah, I've done lots of different kinds of tests. So it sort of depends on the, on the thing I'm testing. And sometimes if I'm, if I'm testing something that's emitting CO2, then I don't need to be in the room because it's like a, it's a monitor that's that's mimicking a host. And so, so I don't need to be there. But for the thing I've been testing this week, this was a repellent.

So, so I, I had to start off by sleeping in the bed and releasing bugs and then all climbing into the bed. And then I sprayed the repellent around and see if it reduced it and it worked great actually. Yeah, it worked very well. Yeah, good to hear. Good to hear. New product coming soon. Yeah, Yeah. That's an American company. Maybe it will. Yeah. Who knows? Who knows? So you do work for companies all over the world then? Yeah. So there's been a few American, quite a few Scandinavian. Yeah, yeah, pretty, pretty global.

And in the test rooms have been I have to like block time for the last few years. It's it's been pretty much back-to-back projects, you know, a few weeks on this and a few weeks on that. It's been been quite busy. Yeah, it's. Good for business, I suppose. Yeah, it is. Yeah. So she was. A business well. Yeah, and she keeps saying niche business, but you're getting the business. Yeah, yeah. So do you want to tell people about the explain what the bed bug foundation is you're you're part of? Yeah, so, so it was set up by Oliver Madge, who was who thought formally ran.

British Best Control Association and after he finished doing that, he said that bed bug foundation and I joined him very shortly after we set it up. And initially it was just, it was a new problem to, to the industry and there was a lot of misinformation about what what worked and what didn't work. And so the first thing we did is write some codes of practise, pulled in lots of lots of information from lots of different people and it was reviewed by, by lots of different people and we didn't work and that and it's evolved from there.

It now does lots of, so its main service really is, is identifying specimens and advising people on what they should do that so, so that's really two or three hours a day of my time. It's recently it's been a lot over the winter it's less. But recently I've been spending two or three hours a day identifying specimens for people and telling, telling people what they should do. They could be living in an apartment building and they've got boxes coming from their neighbours and they've got a landlord that isn't interested.

So what? So what sort of what can they do to make their lives better? So sometimes there's some, sometimes there's some legal like expert witness type stuff involved in that. And then the, the other, the other side of what the Bed Bug Foundation does since 2017 is it provides certification for the bed bugs and protection dogs. So there's like there's usually between about 75 and 90 bedbug detection dog teams like dotted across Western Europe. They go to one of a network of training schools, I think there's about a dozen or something like that.

And they'll go and take an annual test. And if they pass the test, then they go on a directory site called BBFK 9 where you can find find a team near me. And so it was just a way of when bedbug dogs first popped up in the industry, there was kind of lots of, it was totally unregulated. So pest controllers who were considering using the service didn't know whether whether it was whether they were any good. Basically there was no, no, no way to know if they were providing a good service. There were lots of reports of missed infestations or false alerts.

And so it was just provided some allowed, allowed the pest control industry to have some and the hospitality industry to have some confidence in the quality of the red bug dogs. And I think that's been very successful. And so there's, there's a lot of teams that are coming back for an annual test and then they go on this directory site and they and that brings in work for them then. Well, it's good to hear because he's got to have some kind of backing or authority or it's still some kind of backing that it's.

Yeah. You're the real deal when you're doing bed bug detection. Yeah, just something someone independent saying that, saying that they've got confidence in what you do. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's good, that's good to hear. That is, is there anything else the Bed Bug Foundation does? That's the main things, really, the things that keep us busy. It's the the the certifications and the identifying specimens for people, yeah. So, so we've I I know it's run as a, it's run as a non profit, but identifications, do you charge for that or is that totally?

Free. No, no, it's free. Yeah, it is free. It's it, it. There's a donate button on the on the on the yeah, on the website. And recently that recently it's been, we've been getting a few donations. I did it for years and never got anything for most people don't even say thanks.

People have yeah, people have been great grateful for the service and and have given donations as well. Yeah, which is nice. That's nice, I would have thought. You can't always say thanks. But I suppose the problem is a lot of people in this day and age, because you're over the Internet and you're you're messaging on a phone, they forget there's a real human message in your back. You're not. You're not a bot. You forget that's. The problem? Suppose it's a 21st century, isn't it? You sometimes forget when you're messaging people.

That's a real because a lot of companies have bots, don't they? You talk to bots. And stuff. That's right, yeah. But yeah, you always say thanks, though it's free service, so I don't know. Yeah. And then we have a lot of information as well, like self help, self help information and just just, there's so much like misinformation about bed bugs on the Internet, how long they can live and all sorts of things and what they look like. And so we just tried to provide a kind of provide some, some, some, yeah, viable, useful information, yeah, about how to control them and about their biology and that kind of thing.

Good to hear that says good, good information out there. It's good to have it available. It is. So with your commercial side of the business, you test products. Is there anything else you offer people? Sorry, sound cut out, just that's the question. With with with your commercial side of the business. Yeah, I know you test products, but is there anything else you do for for services for people to do with? That started off primarily as just breeding bugs and supplying them. So we're supplying universities and research labs.

I, I built the, the, the website's called Symex store. And I built the site during my PhD because, because it, because at that time bedbugs were making a comeback and lots of people wanted bedbugs and they were, they were emailing research labs who had them in order to request them. And I was getting inundated with requests for bedbugs. And so I made Symex doors so you could just buy bedbugs and check out. And we, we, we verify who you are, but basically it's just a web shop for bedbugs. And we had some different strains and things.

And so, and so it's the primary business was just breeding and supplying bed bugs to, to research labs and universities and detection dog teams, pest control companies. Yeah, do. You have to be within the business. Could any random person buy a bedbug? No, we, yeah, no random randoms do And we, we have to vet them. Yeah. So with the dog people, we make sure that they're like affiliated with the dog training school and they have some legitimate requirement for them if they've got any kind of business address.

We normally don't question if it's, if it's going to to a pest control company business address, it's fine. But but every year there'll be I need 50 bugs to a flat in New York and you'll be like that. That's that's doesn't sound right. So somebody trying to trying to. Plant like in someone's house flat. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You never know what's going on, but we try not to be part of it. Yeah. That's that's fair enough. Yeah, No thanks. Thanks for your time, Richard. It's been it's been great.

Great to learn it has off here and I hope everyone, everyone's learned something. So if there was one take away from tonight, do you wish pest controllers would do more thorough but it comes to do with bedbugs, what would it be? Well they should be doing it anyway, but I would say don't treat for bedbugs. If you can't find the bedbugs, don't. Don't treat to be on the safe side. Don't treat because the person thinks that they have bedbugs. Like find the bedbugs, it's not that hard and then treat if you find the bedbugs.

And also read the label. It says that. Oh, yeah, it does. It's on the label. Yeah, yeah. It's a violation of cost regulations not to like you're supposed to rule out all the like the non key chemical options before you use chemical as a last resort, aren't you? If you use chemicals as a last resort, then they'll they'll work better and for longer. It's just overuse of pyrethroids is making them yeah less effective. Yeah. It is. It is. But yeah, thank. Thank you, Richard for coming on. I will everyone.

I will put links to the bedbug foundation and the Symex store as well in the description. I want to pull it up. Wait it could be up but I will edit a description so people could check out the book. Bedbug foundation and Symex store. If you want to check any further information out, it's all through them websites and how to. Contact. People. People need to, yeah, but thank you. Thank you. Got a question for you. Is there anyone you would like to see on this podcast that you know? It could be bed bugs, it could be anything different, anything.

Yeah, I should have. I needed some time to think about that. I'll definitely get back in touch by any. That's no problem. I plan to have a wonder. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, no, that's no problem. I do ask it every week, but people don't like a lot of people get back to me they. Do yeah. But the BC's usually warn people about that one. Yeah, yeah, they did. Yeah, they did. And I came back with one, but I wasn't prepared this time. Sorry about that, that's my fault I forgot to tell you about that one. But yes, everyone, after you can register your CPD with British Pest Register for this one and the BPCACPD Diary self register, you can register your CPD for this.

It's been a great one. It has with Doctor Richard Naylor. You are the 1st doctor that I've ever had on this podcast. You are. It's been, it's been, it's been fun. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you for your time, Richard and everyone. Thanks for participating in the chat with Adam Holt and Andrew Sinewski and. He's a future guest, Andrew is and Adam Holt's already been on so previous guest, but you this is the most amount of conversation I've had in my chat. Thank you everyone for supporting the show and I'll see you next week.

All right, thanks everyone. If you hold on a minute, I'll just end the stream.

Bed Bug Biology & Control: Research, Behaviour & Professional Treatment | Dr Richard Naylor

Tonight's Episode

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