The smell of lemons repels cockroaches to a great extent, keeping them away from areas that reek of the fruit.
Roach Repellents
Peppermint oil, cedarwood oil, and cypress oil are essential oils that effectively keep cockroaches at bay. Additionally, these insects hate the smell of crushed bay leaves and steer clear of coffee grounds. If you want to try a natural way to kill them, combine powdered sugar and boric acid.
Research has found that some essential oils—especially rosemary oil—are effective at repelling roaches. Rosemary oil was found to offer a 100% roach mortality rate at the concentration range of 2.5% to 30%. So mix it with water and spray away at your problem areas!
Citrus. You may love the smell of fresh citrus, but cockroaches hate the scent. That means you can use citrus scented cleaners in your kitchen and bathroom to chase any lingering roaches away. You can also keep a few citrus peels around your home in strategic places.
Lemongrass essential oil showed some effectiveness, as well as potential to eradicate German cockroaches. The experimentation suggested that it can be contact toxic and repellent against the German cockroaches, but not through the fumigation application.
Raid Ant & Roach Killer Insecticide Spray was found to be one of the most effective at killing cockroaches. A can is helpful for the times when you spot a roach in your home and you don't want to get too close. A roach spray should kill the bug almost instantly.
In the wild, these include: Amphibians like toads and frogs. Small mammals such as mice and shrews. Beetles, spiders, and other insects or arachnids.
Distilled vinegar does not kill or repel roaches, making it completely ineffective. Distilled vinegar will help keep your kitchen clean, giving cockroaches less to snack on. However, roaches can live for months at a time without any food at all, and they will eat almost anything to survive.
Household bleach is commonly used as a cleaning agent and gives off a strong smell that cockroaches hate.
It's a fact that cockroaches are afraid of humans and other mammals or animals that are bigger than them. They see us as predators and that fear triggers their instinct to scatter away. However, they dislike strong and distinctive scents such as citrus, peppermint, lavender and vinegar.
Eucalyptus oil has a strong scent that seems to have some success in repelling roaches. You can dilute it with water and spray areas you think cockroaches might have nested.
Cockroaches love grease! Meat fats and oils from cooking that splatter around or drip off the stove become a cockroach's fantasy. High in fat and easy to track down, grease is just another top food source for these pests.
A typical homemade cockroach repellent uses one teaspoon of liquid dish soap and one cup of water. However, this is only effective if it can be sprayed directly on the roaches. Adding baking soda or Borax to the mix will effectively kill the roaches where they live.
Coconut oil repels cockroaches and other pests like fleas, bed bugs, and mosquitoes. According to recent studies, the fatty acid-derived substances present in coconut oil help to eradicate them.
Rubbing alcohol will not stop the roaches from coming into your house, so squirting it around doors, windows and holes won't do any good. The best way to deal with roaches is with a professional pest control expert.
Cockroaches are most likely to be active about four hours after dark and enter a period of immobility just afterwards. This immobility period is similar to what humans would call “sleeping.”
A persistent cat would deter cockroaches from returning, and this may prevent their population from growing. This is not guaranteed, nor is it as effective as other pest control methods. A cat's presence may make cockroaches more cautious. They may skulk in the dark or hide where cats cannot reach them.
We've recently heard a rumor that squishing a cockroach is a bad idea because it could spread the insect's eggs around, making more baby cockroaches. "The crushing in itself doesn't really spread eggs," said Louis Sorkin, a scientist in the entomology department at the American Museum of Natural History.
Boric acid: Used correctly, boric acid is one of the most effective roach killers. It's odorless, has low toxicity to pets, and since it isn't repellent to roaches, they will not seek to avoid it, crawling through it repeatedly until it kills them.
Boric acid is one of the best home remedies to get rid of roaches naturally. Mix equal amounts of boric acid, flour, and sugar to make a dough. Set balls of dough around the home where cockroaches can feed on it. The flour and sugar will attract the roaches while the boric acid will kill them.
Moisture. Roaches need moisture to survive and this search for water will bring them into even the cleanest of homes. Leaky pipes and faucets are one of the most common attractants for cockroaches and is one of the main reasons you often see them in bathrooms, kitchens, and laundry rooms.
While lavender oil is a natural repellent against insects, including flies and fleas, it is not usually effective against roaches. Citrus oil, peppermint oil and bay leaves repel roaches naturally. You can combine lavender oil with them to create an all-around insect repellent for your home.
Why Do Flying Cockroaches Fly Toward You? If you think flying cockroaches are flying right toward you, they actually aren't. Most cockroach species aren't good "flyers," and what you take as them flying toward you is actually just them being startled and gliding uncontrollably in a certain direction.