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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 abou
by stirfrykitty 7y ago
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 where they have been. This can be done outside as well. Combine this with orange oil concentrate and your house will be insect free fairly quickly. Cheap, too.
Editing to add, here in the south, loads of people also buy concentrated orange oil from places like Tractor Supply and mix it with water in a pump sprayer. Spray the permimeter of your house and zero insects will cross it. It's toxic as hell to the insects because it dissolves their bodies, but non-toxic to cats, dogs, lizards, etc. They will NOT develop a resistance to being melted by the citric acid.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- lawlessone 7y agoBoric acid is mentioned in the article, they are developing resistance.
- CriticalCathed 7y agoHow 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 article, >All of the tested resistance intervention strategies selected for increased resistance to all AIs applied in field treatments except boric acid....Our results also showed non-significant, but nonetheless elevated cross-“tolerance” towards boric acid in some instances.[0] So it's probably noise in the data. Boric acid is different from the rest of the substances studied. It may not be all that effective however, according to the paper, is my take. [0] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-44296-y https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-44296-y
- orblivion 7y ago> 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.
- CriticalCathed 7y agoI'm sure it's possible, but it's like a human being developing a resistance to a hammer to the skull. It would take much more than few generations of selective pressure to do that.
- perfmode 7y agohow many generations will roaches have passed through within the space of one year? tens? hundreds? thousands?
- graywh 7y agoAmerican cockroaches take 6 months to a year to reach reproductive maturity
- dmitrygr 7y agoYour skull IS such an adaptation. Not hammer, but it does protect your CNS from many physical harms, and was evolutionarily gifted to you back in the days of early vertebrates
- CriticalCathed 7y agoI'm not saying it's not an adaptation. Think about the scale of time you just referenced and compare it to the frame of time of the study and my comment. Read my comment again. Thank you.
- 7y ago
- rpoconn1 7y agocool. Now how do I get rid of the ants that are eating the sugar?
- stirfrykitty 7y agoThe 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.
- gingerlime 7y agoYour comments are what makes HN super-awesome! Thank you. Any tips for mosquitoes when you can’t rely on spiders (or geckos) alone?
- stirfrykitty 7y agoI live less than 1000' from the water's edge, so mosquitoes are ever present for about 9 months of the year. I've tried citronella candles when out BBQing, watching my children play in the lawn, etc. I don't like dousing myself in chemicals, so I don't spray myself with deet, etc. They are a nuisance for which there is little to be done other than avoidance.
- yeahitslikethat 7y agoDeet is benign to humans. Lots of studies on it since it was invented to protect those building the Panama Canal. You can also build bat houses. Bats feed almost exclusively on mosquitos. They eat more than their own body weight in them. There is a great story behind this and I dug deep into the research and history dozens of links long but this might inspire you https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hygieostatic_Bat_Roost https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hygieostatic_Bat_Roost
- lukasbarton 7y ago
- throwaway5752 7y agoOrange oil doesn't contain citric acid, it is mostly limonene.
- elorant 7y agoPowdered or crystallized sugar?
- stirfrykitty 7y agoCrystalline (table sugar). Powered would likely work as well. The baking soda destroys them from the inside out, basically blowing them up. Roaches have strong stomach acid, but they cannot "burp" so the baking soda creates a mini explosion inside them. Fitting end.
- hyperpallium 7y agoThanks, I'm going to try this. Just to be clear: "baking soda" is Bicarbonate of soda (aka. bicarb soda, sodium bicarbonate)? Mix in equal proportions? It's a dry mix, not with water?
- stirfrykitty 7y agoYes, 50/50. Plain old Arm&Hammer. Dry.
- hyperpallium 7y agoThanks. I would have thought the large crystals of sugar would be easy for them to differentiate... but perhaps the baking power ia so fine-grained, it coats the sugar.
- vectorEQ 7y agocleaning also helps
- orblivion 7y agoI hope you're correct, and I have used diatomaceous earth (not in your list, but similar in nature) to mitigate travelers as I moved out of a cockroach infested place. 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?
- close04 7y ago> why are we even having this conversation about insecticides? It might be the same as when people insist on treating a (viral) cold with antibiotics. Not only are they the wrong kind of treatment, they are also a massive overreaction. Perhaps boric acid is not the kind of thing you can make massive profits from.
- stirfrykitty 7y agoI live north of Houston. We have more insects, snakes, and critters than most places on earth. Just in my area we have spiders (wolf, black widow, brown recluse, among others), roaches, ants (fire and normal), scorpions, centipedes, mosquitoes, and more. I have successfully used these to combat insects inside my home. My wife does not like the smell of the orange oil, so I use it judiciously inside (laundry room), but outside around the perimeter. My children aren't exposed to toxic chemicals, but the bugs don't cross the perimeter much. Orange oil appears as "expensive" per liter, but it's concentrated, so I mix it in a gallon sprayer with water and spray. I might actually try soaking bay leaves in the water with the orange oil overnight. In this heat and humidity, the resulting water just might be really nasty for insects. My grandmother swears by spreading cayenne pepper in lieu of bay leaf powder. I think the market sees an opportunity, despite health risks, to market this stuff as an easy solution, but it's like doctors prescribing antibiotics for everything. It's efficacy is wearing thin as insects develop an immunity. I guess nature knows a thing or two about handling insects, so I appeal to the non-toxic stuff as much as possible.
- orblivion 7y agoCool, glad to hear it's working. I've also used cayenne pepper and cinnamon on ants, and tried cleaning their trail with vinegar. They're the Argentine kind (San Francisco area) which means they are _legion_, so I had limited results.
- simonebrunozzi 7y agoWow. Why is this not more widely known?
- Dig1t 7y agoDoes the sugar not attract ants?
- undersuit 7y agoThe same mixture of baking soda and sugar also kills the ants.
- booleandilemma 7y agoWhile we’re on the subject of insect-killing tricks, dish soap + water in a spray bottle is an excellent at killing flies, and it’s very safe for you.
- undersuit 7y ago>They will NOT develop a resistance to being melted by the citric acid. No, but you encourage the selection of the organisms who have a resistance to citric acid, or whatever substance you are using. I think it's very presumptuous to say that by killing everything with a substance you aren't selecting for that resistance.
- bigmit37 7y agoI have to try the bay leaves. Thanks for these pointers.