29-05-2025
A Mosquito Expert Told Me the ‘Bug Bite Thing' Is Bunk. I Love It Anyway.
When I recently asked my Wirecutter colleagues to share their thoughts on the Bug Bite Thing, a suction doohickey that purportedly relieves painful, itchy insect bites and stings without using chemicals, their replies were all over the map: 'I like it. My wife hates it.' 'No, it does not work!' 'It feels like it works pretty good, but not every time.'
When I scrolled through the Bug Bite Thing's 58 pages of customer reviews on Amazon (where its average star rating stands at a respectable 4.1 out of 5), I saw the same gamut of opinions, from 'game changer' to 'kinda works' to 'nope.'
And when I recently spoke about the Bug Bite Thing with Immo Hansen, an associate professor of biology at New Mexico State University and a principal investigator at the school's Molecular Vector Physiology Lab, he told me, 'I would not recommend this thing. But that's my personal opinion.'
Expertise and authority be damned: I still highly recommend it.
I bought my first Bug Bite Thing in 2021, two years after the company's founder and CEO, Kelley Higney, ignited a bidding war for the tool on Shark Tank . (She imports the Bug Bite Thing from Denmark; this type of tool has been around Europe for decades.)
I've since purchased more Bug Bite Things to stash in places like my car, my beach bag, and my purse. Whenever I use one to treat a mosquito bite (I've never had occasion to try it on a bee or wasp sting, knock on wood), I sing its praises to anyone and everyone within earshot.
So it may surprise you that I also agree with all of those other opinions above. The Bug Bite Thing is seemingly based on suspicious-at-best science, and it definitely does not work 100% of the time. And yet, I staunchly believe that for anyone contending with critters — especially mosquitoes — the Bug Bite Thing is an absolutely worthwhile tool to have on hand.
For the uninitiated, let me break down how the Bug Bite Thing supposedly works, why it almost certainly does not work the way it claims to, and how it somehow still works (just not always).
The Bug Bite Thing is a plastic, syringe-like contraption (don't worry, there's no needle) that's about the size of a glue stick. To treat a bite, you place its mouth over the bite area, and then you slowly pull up its plunger-style handles to create suction. After holding it that way for 10 to 20 seconds, you let go of the handles to release the suction. According to the company that makes the tool, this action will remove whatever foreign substance is causing you discomfort, whether it's mosquito saliva, bee or wasp venom, a bee stinger, or even a splinter. The Bug Bite Thing can create a surprising amount of suction. Rose Maura Lorre
Those simple instructions do come with caveats.
You might have to repeat the process once, twice, or even three times before you start feeling relief. The quicker you can treat a fresh bite, the company notes, the greater your odds are of treating it successfully. The suctioning can leave a temporary red mark that may resemble a hickey. It's not recommended to use the Bug Bite Thing on your face or neck, where those hickey marks can become more pronounced and welt-like. To use the Bug Bite Thing, place the mouth of the device over your bite or sting, and then pull up on the handles to create suction. After you release the handles, you may find a temporary, reddish mark is left behind (as seen in the second pic). Rose Lorre/NYT Wirecutter
The reversible suction cap has two mouth sizes. The smaller one (about a quarter-inch wide) can purportedly be used 'on smaller areas like fingers and toes.' However, I find that the smaller mouth hole provides much weaker suction, so I use only the wider side. The Bug Bite Thing's reversible suction cap has two different mouth sizes. I always use the bigger one (right) because I find that the smaller one (left) creates much weaker suction. Rose Lorre/NYT Wirecutter
But perhaps the biggest caveat, as Higney confirmed to me in an email, is that the company doesn't have any clinical trials demonstrating the product's efficacy. Hansen, the mosquito expert, told me in our phone interview that he can't point to any scientific explanation for the Bug Bite Thing, either.
'Without having tested it myself in a scientific way, which would be hard to do, I'd say that I don't think you can remove mosquito saliva from the bite site using it,' he said. 'I'd say there's a 0.000001% chance that it actually has a scientific background.'
His main contention is that the puncture wound caused by a mosquito bite is too narrow and shallow to be reused as a channel for removing saliva or venom. Although mosquitoes come in different sizes, a 2022 study measured a female mosquito's proboscis (its long, pointed feeding tube) at 2 millimeters in length and less than a tenth of a millimeter in diameter.
'It's like acupuncture,' Hansen explains. 'When you take an acupuncture needle out, the skin closes and heals right away.'
I told Hansen that out of the dozens and dozens of times I've used the Bug Bite Thing, I once saw what looked pretty clearly like a red mist of blood inside its suction cap afterward. To my layperson's brain, this illustrates that you actually can suck saliva out of the puncture wound just as the mosquito created the wound to push its saliva in. But Hansen was still skeptical. 'I think you might have already had a nick there,' he said.
He said he thinks there's a more likely reason that Bug Bite Thing users often claim it works: The increase of fresh blood being drawn toward the affected area through the suction may be providing some relief. 'It could be that bringing blood into this area allows for a quicker recovery, but I don't know,' he added.
It could also be that the suctioning causes a counter-sensation that distracts you from the itch. Or the whole thing could just be a placebo effect. The Bug Bite Thing isn't 100% effective at relieving bug bites, but it is 100% portable and 0% messy, and it never runs out. Rose Lorre/NYT Wirecutter
Here's the thing: Mosquito control is a numbers game. The way I see it, when it comes to warding off mosquitoes, the more prevention methods you use, the better the odds are that you won't get bitten. That's why I use multiple methods simultaneously, including turning on a fan, using zone repellent, and applying picaridin-based sprays. None of these approaches will ever be 100% successful; all of them only kinda work, but that's okay. I operate on the theory that one bite is a lot better than two or seven or a dozen, and therefore, several methods of protection are better than one.
Similarly, there are many available treatments to relieve itching and swelling once you are inevitably feasted upon. There are countless creams, cold compresses, itch-targeting gel pens, heat-zapping gizmos, and so on. I believe in having several treatments on hand, and whatever works, works. (To be honest, my favorite treatment is an ice cube, but they don't travel well, they get messy, and sometimes you run out of them.) I do not care if a placebo effect is what's getting me to scratch my bites less.
What I like most about the Bug Bite Thing versus other treatments is you have to buy it only once, and it costs all of $10 (or even less per Thing, if you buy a multipack, or you get one on sale). Also, it never runs out, it never accidentally leaks all over the contents of my purse, it doesn't count as a liquid in my carry-on, and my kid will never have an allergic reaction to it. And as long as you don't apply too much suction, it doesn't hurt.
The Bug Bite Thing is not perfect, but it's effective enough — and that's good enough for me.
This article was edited by Megan Beauchamp and Maxine Builder. We've recommended Thermacell products for five years because they are compact, easy to use, and effective.
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