If bed bugs invade your New Jersey home or New York City business, the nation’s top bed bug experts agree that professional treatment by an experienced, state-licensed bed bug expert is the only sure way to exterminate these hard-to-kill blood-sucking insects. Asked about the proliferation of homegrown bed bug products that have appeared on the market since bed bugs made their U.S. comeback a decade ago, experts attending the recent Entomology 2013 conference cautioned consumers, noting that while there are a few stellar products that work, many bed bug products fail to live up to their promises.

As noted in our previous post, laboratory testing by a Rutgers University research team has shown alcohol and moth balls, two popular home remedies, to be completely ineffective in killing bed bugs. However, the Rutgers team did found some bed bug products that live up to their claims, including:

• Protect-A-Bed bed bug bite-proof mattress covers and box spring encasements, the gold standard in bed bug protection;

• Heat chambers and portable heat units; and

• Extreme cold produced by liquid carbon dioxide, the active agent that makes Stern’s Cryonite such an effective bed bug exterminator.

These and other bed bug detection and protection products are available from Stern Environmental’s online marketplace.