Pheromone-based traps for monitoring and catching bed bugs

With the ban on DDT and other powerful pesticides, bed bugs are back with a vengeance and spreading across the country. From hotels to homes and businesses, they are piggybacking on traveler's bags, clothes and other personal belongings and end up in the strangest places: libraries; hospitals; department store changing rooms; and even movie theaters. In the worldwide race to develop a solution, SpringStar Inc, a Seattle-area biotech company, is releasing two new advanced pheromone-based traps for monitoring and catching bed bugs. The products will be released next week at the National Hardware Show in Las Vegas for shipments to stores in June. These pheromone traps are designed to help travelers be certain that their hotel rooms are not infested and that they have not brought the bugs back home with them.

“In our rigorous testing of both of these traps in infested shelters and private homes, we caught hundreds of bed bugs every night. All stages of these biting insects showed a strong preference for the pheromone bait in comparative tests”

The BioCare ^® First Response Bed Bug Monitor^TM is an overnight trap designed to quickly check if bugs are present. It uses a patent-pending pheromone solution and is a simple, disposable trap proven highly effective at downtown Seattle shelters, where it has been field tested. The pheromone-baited trap consistently out-caught traps without pheromones, and other brands of bed bug traps (which caught absolutely no bed bugs, even with thousands of bed bugs nearby). With few choices, victims of bed bugs have a difficult time identifying bed bug infestations. The smaller stages of the insect are tiny and hard to see. Even larger stages are hard to find because the insects hide in hard-to-find places. Homeowners resort to sticky traps, professional inspections and even dogs. Bed bugs are not known to transmit disease, but some people have severe reactions to their bites.

SpringStar is also releasing a permanent, long-term device, the BioCare^® First Response Bed Bug Trap^TM, which can be placed in homes, hotels and other locations before and after pesticide treatments to confirm whether or not there are bed bugs present. "In our rigorous testing of both of these traps in infested shelters and private homes, we caught hundreds of bed bugs every night. All stages of these biting insects showed a strong preference for the pheromone bait in comparative tests," said Sam Hapke, SpringStar's Research Manager. He added that another brand of bed bug sticky trap (without pheromones) caught no insects throughout the testing, even with thousands of insects in the room. Both BioCare^® First Response Bed Bug products are easy to use and contain no pesticides. They require no power or gas canisters to work. Look for them online and in stores by early summer.