Bed bugs and Beauveria bassiana (Aprehend®): Determining how distance traveled and surface type affect efficacy

The cryptic behavior that characterizes bed bugs has been hindering their successful control. The use of products that have long lasting residuality is a key component in the management of this pest which tends to stay hidden in its harborage during the day, coming out mainly at night to acquire a blood meal. Aprehend is a biopesticide for bed bug control, based on the spores of the entomopathogenic fungi, Beauveria bassiana. This product has shown to have long residuality, being effective on all the life stages of bed bugs and causing mortality upon their crawling over an Aprehend-treated surface. In this project we tested how different widths of the Aprehend barriers affect mortality when applied on different types of substrates where bed bugs would likely crawl to reach the host and whether time and the number of spores picked up by the bed bug can influence mortality.