By Richard Fagerlund
Scripps Howard News Service
Q: We recently had a problem with bed bugs which we successfully exterminated following the advice on a flyer you had written a few years ago. My question is, do bed bugs have any good qualities or are they just blood-suckers with no redeeming values?
A: I don't know if they have any redeeming qualities or not but they are very interesting insects. For instance, they have been used for a number of medicinal purposes.
Crushed bed bugs, mixed with salt and human milk made a fine eye ointment. In powdered form they were thought to cure all fevers and for hysteria they were given internally, and just the smell of them was considered sufficient to relieve those under hysterical suffocation. In some parts of Ohio, eating seven bed bugs mixed with beans is considered a cure for chills and fever.
Bed bugs also have an interesting sex life. The males have large, scimitar-like sex organs with which they pierce the females body wall, not bothering to use her sex organs. They fill the female's body with semen, some it which makes it to her reproductive organs. The rest is absorbed as protein by the female and used as nourishment.
When feeding, bed bugs have been observed climbing on top of another bed bug which is feeding on a human and piercing that bed bug with its beak and sucking the blood from it, thus getting the blood second hand. This body piercing of the females by males or while feeding seems to have no effect on the bed bug getting pierced.
I had a small number of bed bugs I collected a year ago that I kept in captivity for seminars. I fed these bugs on the back of my hand, which worked very well. They survived and reproduced in the cage quite well with a steady diet of my blood. Bed bugs are not known to transmit any diseases so this practice was not dangerous at all and the bites are relatively painless.
(Send questions for Richard Fagerlund to University of New Mexico Environmental Services, Physical Plant Department, 1818 Camino del Servicio N.E., Albuquerque, NM 87131-3500 or e-mail fagerlun@unm.edu.)
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