81–90 of 154 posts
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Lots of large ones in Australia. Regularly seen them fly to our apartment in Sydney. Hate those things and I don't miss them at all in Europe.
Where do you live in Europe that doesn't have roaches? I live in Greece and the cities are infested with them during summer.
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The baking soda will kill them, too. Orange oil, bay leaves, and baking soda/sugar mix are all non-toxic to humans and animals, and all cheap. And they all work very well. Where I live, the only insects I will not kill are the spiders. They hang out under my roof line and eat all the bad flying insects like mosquitoes.
Your comments are what makes HN super-awesome! Thank you. Any tips for mosquitoes when you can’t rely on spiders (or geckos) alone?
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You must not live with cockroaches if you feel no need to stop them.
Inside the US, they seem to be present in large numbers in the deep south (FL through TX). Are they present in the southwest as well? Here in DC, we get them, but generally only in homes that aren't kept clean - which can a problem in large apartment buildings, as it only takes one slovenly neighbor or poorly tended garbage area to let a colony grow and become a visible nuisance. And what about Europe? Probably too c…
Wonder if Diatomaceous earth still works https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diatomaceous_earth
I use this as one part of a multi-pronged approach, dusting around areas they would need to cross to get into the house. It's super-cheap and lasts a long time.
It does need to stay relatively dry, though. When I've needed to repair drywall on occasion, I dust a bunch in the opening figuring it will basically last forever and not get wet.
I also use a bait with boric acid placed in various random areas. I also use a product that slowly emits a vapor in closed areas that basically neuters any roaches that get near it (for places like under the sink). Finally I used Home Defense spray around the outside.
I treat the condo once every three months, and it takes about 30 minutes. I've seen maybe two cockroaches in the past few years, and both were belly-up.
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I used to have crickets for my bearded dragons and after a while I also took a liking to them. I feel that if you watch almost any animal closely for a while you see interesting traits and behaviors that make them likeable.
Honestly cockroaches are way better feeders than crickets. Crickets are so annoying, smelly, and if you don't take the uneaten ones out of your dragon's cage they can blind them!
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Boric acid is mentioned in the article, they are developing resistance.
How can they develop a resistance to something that physically destroys their exoskeleton? It acts as an abrasive. >Boric acid also has the reputation as "the gift that keeps on killing" in that cockroaches that cross over lightly dusted areas do not die immediately, but that the effect is like shards of glass cutting them apart. This often allows a roach to go back to the nest where it soon dies. edit: found the art…
Broadly speaking, couldn't they just develop a change to the structure of their exoskeleton? I can see how it might be less likely than a chemical resistance, but it still seems possible.
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How can they develop a resistance to something that physically destroys their exoskeleton? It acts as an abrasive. >Boric acid also has the reputation as "the gift that keeps on killing" in that cockroaches that cross over lightly dusted areas do not die immediately, but that the effect is like shards of glass cutting them apart. This often allows a roach to go back to the nest where it soon dies. edit: found the art…
> How can they develop a resistance to something that physically destroys their exoskeleton? It acts as an abrasive. Broadly speaking, couldn't they just develop a change to the structure of their exoskeleton? I can see how it might be less likely than a chemical resistance, but it still seems possible.
Mix baking soda and sugar together and put them in a bowl. Will kill them dead without toxicity to humans. Boric acid has no resistance. Bay leaves repel about every insect known to man. Roaches hate bay leaves and will not be in the same area with them. Editing to say that bay leaves can be crushed in a coffee grinder, put in a plastic ketchup/mustard bottle as a powder, and the resulting powder "puffed" into areas…
But broadly speaking, I have to at least be a little skeptical - if all of these things are such easy fixes with no cost to human health, why are we even having this conversation about insecticides? Why was the market created in the first place? Is it just good advertising?
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Where do you live in Europe that doesn't have roaches? I live in Greece and the cities are infested with them during summer.
I've never seen once in Finland. When I lived in the UK I'd never seen one in the wild either, for that matter.
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cool. Now how do I get rid of the ants that are eating the sugar?
The baking soda will kill them, too. Orange oil, bay leaves, and baking soda/sugar mix are all non-toxic to humans and animals, and all cheap. And they all work very well. Where I live, the only insects I will not kill are the spiders. They hang out under my roof line and eat all the bad flying insects like mosquitoes.
2. I actually like ants, unless you're talking about the really nasty ones like army ants or red fire ants. I don't mind them in my house, stealing my food; I just don't want to accidentally kill them. Some people raise them in formicariums (like aquariums, but for ants). I used to have a formicarium when I was in Canada, but have been having trouble trying to start a Carebara affinis or Carebara diversa colony in Hong Kong. Ants, like a lot of other apocrita, are actually quite "hygiene-conscient", almost to the point of OCD. Ants are also pollinators and scavengers that clean up the ground by carrying whatever they can eat into their nests. I have never heard about ants being vectors of human-affecting diseases.
TL;DR: Try not to kill the ants.