Scientist sleeps with bed bugs in garden laboratory to test repellents

An entomologist sleeps alongside bed bugs in a laboratory at the bottom of his garden to test pest-control products, and feeds thousands of the insects on his own blood twice a week.

Dr Richard Naylor, 45, keeps around 60,000 bed bugs at his home in the Forest of Dean, Gloucestershire. His garden testing facility includes a self-contained two-bedroom suite, where he spends nights assessing devices, sprays and repellents supplied from around the world.

The overnight stays serve a practical purpose: without a human host, he says, the insects do not behave as they would in an occupied bedroom. Carbon dioxide in breath and body heat help trigger their activity, making a person’s presence essential to realistic trials.

“I can’t test traps and sprays in a room without a person because the bed bugs don’t do anything.”

Naylor has worked with bed bugs since 2001. He and his wife, Alexia, a former biology teacher, run the Bed Bug Foundation, a not-for-profit business conducting insect research and product trials for the pest-management industry.

He also breeds and sends bed bugs around the world, often to canine detection teams that help hotels identify infestations.

Keeping the colonies fed is part of his working routine. Twice a week, he uses elastic bands to fasten pots containing hungry bugs to his forearms, sometimes using his legs when he needs more space. While they feed, he gets on with website administration.

The pots have metal lids, and feeding takes only a few minutes. After about ten minutes, when the insects appear full of blood and begin crawling back up the paper inside, he swaps the pots over. This allows him to feed thousands in a relatively short time.

Naylor says he has been bitten “millions and millions” of times and no longer develops swelling or inflammation. He describes himself as immune to the bites, although he says he sometimes experiences symptoms of anaemia.

He estimates that it takes around 40,000 bites for a person to stop reacting, a point he says he passed more than a decade ago. For most people, he says, a bite resembles an angry mosquito bite, but can be more severe.

The insects’ effect on people is not confined to their skin. Naylor says the greatest consequence of an infestation is often its impact on mental health.

“People become isolated because they don’t want to spread them to their friends or have their friends come and visit them.

“People feel a lot of disgust with themselves when they have bedbugs, and they don’t want to share that with anyone.”

He says people often begin scratching and look horrified when he explains his work. In conversations with people in malarial areas of South America, he has found some more frightened of bed bugs than of mosquitoes capable of causing serious illness or death.

Alexia has worked in the business for 15 years, though she does not sleep in the test rooms. The couple have been together since Naylor was 16, when his bedroom was already full of animals. He has kept tarantulas, scorpions, reptiles and other unusual pets since childhood, and says she shares his interest in bed bugs and the natural world.

Containment has not been perfect. Naylor says their work has led to infestations in the family home four times in about 25 years, which he regards as relatively few given their near-daily contact with the insects. Metal channels across the test-room doorways prevent bugs escaping underneath the doors.

For anyone who suspects an infestation, the Bed Bug Foundation advises decluttering around the bed, removing bedding and other soft furnishings, and inspecting the mattress while it remains on the bed, as well as the bed frame. Its advice also includes using desiccant dusts and fitting bed-isolation devices to prevent the insects returning.