You’ve likely heard that bugs can be repelled by certain scents and smells. You can use peppermint, tea tree oil, lavender, and other scents to keep bugs away from your property. If you follow this theory, you may believe that bedbugs can be repelled using scents as well. Will this work, or are you wasting your time? Well, you’ll find that bedbugs will attempt to avoid certain smells, but there are a lot of misconceptions about this. In reality, these scents will work on some bedbugs, but not all of them.
One scent that effectively repels bedbugs is the pheromones that nymphs or baby bedbugs release. This scent is released in an attempt to keep adult bedbugs away from baby bedbugs so they won’t breed with them. The only issue here is that this won’t work for female bedbugs. These pheromones are only going to stop male bedbugs from approaching your home. Nevertheless, a lot of bedbug repellents on the shelf contain these pheromones.
Furthermore, consumers will be surprised to learn that the US Department of Agriculture recently released a study regarding the effectiveness of essential oils for repelling bedbugs. The study provided interesting and insightful results. Researchers found that bedbugs were not repelled by the smell of essential oils. However, the smell did have an impact on their bodies.
Spearmint oil, silicone oil, paraffin oil, and blood orange oil were the most effective for this purpose, but none were reliable. With that being said, essential oils are not good for keeping bedbugs away from your property.