🎙️ Pest Perspectives EP 15 – Dr. Richard Naylor | Bed Bug Biology, Research & Awareness - 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

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.

Tonight's Episode