When you first walk into a supermarket, what’s the first thing you smell? Can you smell those freshly baked cookies? What about that fresh-out-of-the-oven bread? There’s a reason why food stores place the bakeries at the entrance of the store, to lure you into purchasing their fresh baked goods. Similarly to the way bakeries lure you to the cookies, which somehow ended up in your cart, that’s the way the SenSci Activ bed bug lure works.
Bed bugs feed exclusively on blood and can be lured to their food source by chemicals on the surface of the skin. Researchers from Rutgers University developed the lure contained within the SenSci Activ packet to mimic chemicals found on the surface of the skin, which will increase the chance you detect bed bugs. Bed bugs are increasingly more mobile than previously thought, and strategic placement of interception devices with a lure go a long way in detecting bed bugs. Not only was the lure created to help monitor for the presence of bed bugs, but it was also created to increase the number of bed bugs a monitor captures. This can provide relief to the people residing in a home with bed bugs who were being bitten.
What does the SenSci Activ Lure do?
According to Jeff White, Director of Innovation and Technical Content for BedBug Central, the SenSci Activ is designed to “mimic the chemicals found on the surface of the skin.” The lure would be equivalent to the attraction of a sweaty t-shirt on your floor for bed bugs. The scent of sweat is one thing that attracts bed bugs to their host.
Dr. Changlu Wang, of Rutgers University, was one of the researchers that developed the SenSci Activ bed bug lure.
“The lure was created to help improve the efficacy of bed bug traps,” he said. “Passive monitors do not have lures. Passive monitors only trap bed bugs when they accidentally encounter the traps. Finding an effective and affordable lure was urgently needed to help detect bed bugs. It is known that bed bugs are attracted to human odor when they search for hosts. The SenSci Activ lure is created to mimic the host odor.”
As bed bugs are traveling through an environment, they will sense the scent from the Activ lure and travel to it. When the lure is placed into an interception device like a Volcano, BlackOut® or ClimbUp®, bed bugs will then fall into the device and be captured.
“SenSci Activ can be used in various types of pitfall monitors such as ClimbUp®, Blackout®, Volcano,” Dr. Changlu Wang said. “Bed bugs searching for a host will more likely to fall in the pitfall style monitors when the center of the pitfall traps has a lure that is attractive to bed bugs.”
Be sure to place the interceptors equipped with the Activ lure in locations where bed bugs are most likely to travel, such as next to the legs of the bed or along a baseboard near a sleeping or resting area. The SenSci Activ lure can attract up to twice as many bed bugs into a bed bug interception device.
To purchase the SenSci Activ bed bug Lure, contact your local distributor.