How a Folk Leafy Remedy Helped Stop Bedbugs Right in Their Tracks

The remedy employed by the ancient European housewives to curb the bed bugs from reaching the beds and causing infestation was based on the bean leaves. Initially they used to spread the bean leaves all around the floor in the infested room at night. These leaves acted as traps for the bed bugs which got tangled in these leaves and in the morning, the leaves along with the trapped bugs were collected and burnt to eradicate the chances of infestation. This bed bug and leaf interaction is being studied extensively on scientific basis by the scientists of America. The basic theme of this study is to use the natural interaction in minimizing the infestation caused by bed bugs and other insects.

The outcomes of the study and quest of the scientists in this field were published in The Journal of the Royal Society Interface in which a detail was given about how the insects get trapped or get hooked up in the tiny fibers of the leaves. Nowadays the scientists are trying to get these hooks and traps prepared synthetically so that the excessive use of leaves should be avoided. However it has also been published along with other studies that the method of preparation of artificial hooks just like those of bean leaves has not proved to be that much successful. These traps have been far less efficient than the biological traps found on the bean leaves.

The idea was brought to lime light ad made clear by the biologist who specialized in the subject and study of bed bug locomotion. According to a biologist named Catherine Loudon working as the major research in charge at University of California, it was practically difficult and to some extent impossible impaling the insects in the artificially made fiber traps just as they are done by the natural bean leaf fiber traps. There are many reasons for so much difference in the performance of the natural and artificial traps created for the bed bugs. Basically no direct link has been found about the interaction between the bed bugs and the traps of bean leaves.

The structure of leaves is basically designed by nature in such a way that it can easily interact and work with the anatomical features of the legs of these bugs. In fact it is the area of joints on the legs of these bugs which gets pierced by these fiber traps on the leaves. As a result the bugs are rendered injurious and unable to move.