Today, pest control professionals most often use gel bait insecticides to control and eliminate cockroaches. This requires the placement of small beads of gel bait in areas where the cockroaches are known or expected to live, travel, or feed.
Fogging systems are great at killing roaches on contact, but foggers can actually push the majority of them further into their safer hiding places. Fogging or bombing roaches creates a long-term problem for you and your loved ones that will not go away.
PEST MANAGEMENT PROFESSIONAL
Hiring a Terminix specialist to treat a roach infestation provides you with peace of mind, offers a proven and effective approach to getting rid of cockroaches and provides an ongoing solution to cockroach control. It also eliminates the need to have traps scattered around your home.
To find out where the cockroaches are nesting, you can use lights to get a general idea. Flipping the lights on and off in a dark room and observing where the creatures run will let you know where the nest location is. You can use a flashlight or your phone flashlight to look under furniture and other areas of clutter.
If you have children or pets, baits are a much safer way to control cockroaches. Baits are ideal for sensitive accounts and IPM programs. Since baits pose less hazard than sprays, they are ideally suited for use around children, the ill, or the elderly.
The first step in keeping them away is to figure out what attracts cockroaches in the first place. Roaches will come into your home for 4 main reasons: food, water, warmth, and shelter. They are often attracted to: Dirty dishes.
Most of the time, when someone “suddenly” sees a cockroach, it's not quite as sudden as it seems. In other words, they've probably been in the home for a while, and you seeing them is more related to luck than anything else. Maybe you moved whatever they've been hiding under for the last several weeks.
Cockroaches have an incredible sense of smell that they use to find food. You can take advantage of this fact by using scents they dislike such as thyme, citrus, basil, mint, and citronella to repel them from your home.
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.
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.
Water and Soap Spray — A simple mixture of water and dish soap will dry the roaches out, killing them. Mix equal parts into a spray bottle and have at it! Lay Down Eggshells — it may sound a bit odd, but cockroaches are repelled by eggshells, too. Place some inside the cabinets and this should stop them from entering.
The average cockroach lifespan is about twenty to thirty weeks given that the roach has ready access to food and water. The first stage in the life of cockroach females and males alike is the egg stage. Eggs are produced in what are called egg capsules.
Daytime Dens
Because cockroaches dislike light, they disappear during the daytime to dark places, including the undersides of appliances like stoves and refrigerators, underneath sinks or other installations, near plumbing, inside light switches and behind wall paneling or doorjambs.
It takes about two weeks for all the roaches to be flushed out. Severe infestations might even require a second treatment. But your exterminator should let you know if this is needed.
The answer is, once you spray roaches, they will not immediately come out. Sometimes you have to wait for two to two weeks before the pest comes out and other times; they don't come out at all because maybe they have already adapted to the sprays you have used.
Climb Time. Often roaches will harbor in sewers and drains. From there, they can scale the drain pipes and climb into your home. One way you can eliminate this problem is by flushing the toilets, running lots of water and then pouring bleach down the drains to keep the roaches from hanging on.
Will roaches leave a cold house? Roaches, in general, do not like cold temperatures, so subjecting them to cold enough environments might force them to leave in search of warmer surroundings. That said, some species can tolerate lower temperatures as long as they have access to food and water.