For centuries people have been experimenting with the unique properties of specific scents. You can get a big whiff of a peppermint scent and it’ll calm you right down when you’re feeling stressed. You can use some scents to block out pain receptors to trick your mind into thinking you aren’t hurting. There are truly a wide variety of ways that you can uniquely utilize the properties and powers of specific scents. Some people are now even toying with using these scents to repel bed bugs.
Some manufacturers have already started and they’ve started with a little scent known as the nymph pheromone. What is this scent and is it effective at repelling bed bugs? To better understand this, you first must know that adult male bed bugs are prolific breeders. When they go into heat, they will try to breed with anything and everything, including baby bed bugs. Unfortunately, this is a process that kills the baby bed bug. And, this is where the nymph pheromone comes in.
The baby bed bug releases the nymph pheromone to repel the adult males. It scares them away and deters them from mating. While this scent is effective because that’s virtually what it was designed to do by nature, there are things you have to keep in mind. First, the scent is only effective against adult males. It will do nothing against other baby bed bugs or females. In addition to this, the efficiency of the scent is limited at best. Nonetheless, this is still truly fascinating stuff and has even lead the United States Department of Agriculture to conduct some of its own studies and research.
What they discovered during their trials was also pretty fascinating. That discovered that there are indeed some scents that are more effective than others. They also uncovered that these scents have a profound effect on the bug’s bodies as well. With this in mind, some of the scents that proved to be more effective than the others were blood orange oil, paraffin oil, silicone oil, and spearmint oil. Although these scents have proven effective, they are limited at best as to what they can do. This is not to deter anyone from trying to use scent to repel bed bugs because it is a well-known fact that they are effective. It just comes down to choosing the right scents and utilizing them in the right manner.
