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We have effective pest control for roaches, probably developed around the same time. Using growth regulators like Gentrol make it so the cockroaches can’t breed
by wincy 3y ago
We have effective pest control for roaches, probably developed around the same time. Using growth regulators like Gentrol make it so the cockroaches can’t breed effectively, so after a generation or two they go extinct. Somehow roaches got into our suburban home and I was able to destroy them using this method. Pesticides and roach bait didn’t do much — the growth regulators were key in permanently removing the infestation.
I’d guess the difficulty in a place like New York is similar to the problem I’m having with mice because we have a forest behind the house — an essentially endless reservoir of new roaches living in the pipes and throughout the city.
Source: was professional exterminator about 15 years ago. Growth regulators were the only thing that worked.
- klodolph 3y agoSpeaking of New York—everyone’s story with roaches is that they get them when a new neighbor moves in. You can’t get rid of roaches in your apartment as long as your neighbors contribute the steady stream of new roaches.
- lbotos 3y agoIts... wildly accurate. Neighbors decided they were tired of tenants and roach problems so they removed the kitchen from their rented apartment. Roach problem went away for them and me. I will randomly get a few waterbugs (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oriental_cockroach https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oriental_cockroach) which are alarming but it's usually when temps are dramatically changing.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- dylan604 3y agoThese are one of the favorite hunting conquests for my two cats. They are fast and change directions quickly and can fly. They are tough to catch to throw back outside, but not as fun as a cicada that is flying around and your cat(s) are jumping off of the furniture trying to catch them again. There are times where the cat and I are trying to catch the waterbug before it gets somewhere hard to get, but for very different reasons.
- jghn 3y agoI lived in a large building that developed a roach problem. They were able to identify the original culprit. It turned out that when they mapped the complaints about roaches in units, it was radiating outwards over time from a single unit. Not that that made life any easier once the buggers took over the building, but hey
- henrikschroder 3y agoIt is also unfortunately rather common that the person living in the source apartment never complains about having roach problems, never admits to having a roach problem, and certainly don't want to let people in to check or fix it. Which leaves everyone else angry and in a perpetual loop of infestations.
- trgn 3y agoYep. Prolonged vacancy is bad too. Usually pest problems are highest when moving in, and then keeping a place clean and occupied is the best way to maintain pest-free apartment.
- wincy 3y agoInteresting, that makes sense. I lived in an apartment with 8 units back in my exterminator days, and my landlord was more than happy to let me in to all 8 of them to do a thorough spray. It was much harder to spray apartment complexes with hundreds of units and treating for roaches in every single unit was prohibitively expensive (or my boss was a cheapskate, I don’t know), so we’d only do targeted treatment where we had seen roaches and surrounding units. Single family homes were much easier to treat. I strongly suspect we got roaches in our single family house when a home care nurse brought them with her, along with a bed bug! I almost died when I saw that monstrosity, luckily we avoided an infestation, those are 10x worse than any cockroach. You do not want bed bugs.
- _a_a_a_ 3y agoCockroaches can be imported by a person? How on earth does that happen.
- j4yav 3y agoAll it takes is one pregnant cockroach in a box somewhere. They will often hide in electronic devices.
- danielbln 3y agoStep on one, eggs stick to the shoe and voila.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- mountainofdeath 3y agoCoffee makers. I once picked up a nice, high-end Keuring machine for free from a neighbor. Later than evening, I noticed something moving around it. It was full of roaches. I put it in a trash bag and ran to put it in the garbage outside. The exterminator and landlord both said the warmth and moisture of coffee machines is a magnet for roaches and coffee is their favorite snack.
- 3y ago
- CTDOCodebases 3y agoI lived in an apartment that had the kitchen redone. Once that happened no more roaches. Now whenever I move into a new apartment I use space filler foam and silicon to seal around all the possible entrencences bugs could use to enter my apartment internally. So far so good.
- throwaway81523 3y agoMy own memory of New York is that if noticed an absence of roaches in your apartment, that meant you had mice, and the mice were eating the roaches. I told a friend that (she had happily commented about not having roaches) and she looked rather alarmed. I should have kept quiet.
- klodolph 3y agoThere is a secret third option, which is to have a cat in the apartment :3
- milsorgen 3y agoAnd when the cats get out of control introduce a bear? Or is it an alligator? ;)
- alexvoda 3y agoYou need to eventually make this ecology circular.
- tomcam 3y agoJust ate our apartment cat—-thanks for that advice. Wait now I need a new one
- moron4hire 3y agoI don't think NY has a native bear population (well, it does, but it's the wrong kind of bear), but you could get the alligator from the sewer.
- throwaway81523 3y agoI will have to ask the old lady who swallowed the fly.
- Verdex 3y agoAlligator. When winter comes they freeze to death.
- saghm 3y agoEvery month or so, my apartment building sends someone to knock on every door of the (admittedly small) building to offer to spray a few places (like behind the stove) to keep out pests. I hadn't thought of it from this perspective before, but it makes sense from the perspective of trying to solve the problem you mention; the only way to keep them out is to handle it uniformly across all the units, and having someone come around to offer it every so often makes sure that new people moving in get it treated and no one will forget due to having to remember on their own.
- PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y agothis is why bombing a house doesn't work, the roaches flee to the neighbors, they then bomb and they flee back to your house (or migrate back over time). I absolutely refuse to live in houses with roaches, too many horror stories. I once moved out of a house and left everything I owned in it due to the roaches.
- KennyBlanken 3y agoIt's the activity of the move that disturbs them. Same thing with mice/rats. Happens when nearby buildings are under construction, as well.
- user3939382 3y agoYeah I’ve combined two products, Gentrol and Invict Gold. The combination nukes large populations.
- 8bitsrule 3y agoFinding their ritual pathways helps in deciding where to sprinkle stuff that's bad for their health and that they'll bring home with them. One such thing is borax/boric acid. Ants, as well.
- rngname22 3y agoSo much of the problem of extermination is due to SEO and misinformation, agree or disagree? If a poorly educated, stressed mom working two jobs googles "cockroaches in kitchen", what percentage of online information she finds is naive, misguided, maliciously lies, etc?
- hcurtiss 3y agoAgreed. And, maybe more subversive, it's like there's some effort to discourage the solutions that actually work (e.g., poisons and growth regulators) in favor of "natural solutions" that don't do any good. For instance, here's the top of the Google page I get for "cockroaches in kitchen." https://img.bigchief.wtf/i/cf993b56-5831-4d4a-974f-4860158db326.jpg https://img.bigchief.wtf/i/cf993b56-5831-4d4a-974f-4860158db...
- AniseAbyss 3y ago[dead]
- genewitch 3y agoboric acid is extremely effective. I use only boric acid, and i live in a forest. I put the powder under the stove, around the edges of cabinets, under the fridge, etc. After a new dusting (every 3-4 months or more) the carcasses will show up, maybe a half dozen. And if you want a spray to kill insects you can see and watch, IPA (rubbing alcohol) and mint extract works fine. Except against centipedes. For ants boric acid works sometimes, but so does talc or diatomaceous earth. However this stops them from tracking while you clean up whatever they're after. In my experience dealing with sugar ants, pissants, RIFA (fire ants from south america), fire ants (red ants in CA), and so on; the only 100% effective way to get rid of them is to put popcorn kernels in a blender and chop it till everything is smaller than 1/16" or so, and leave that somewhere moisture can't get to it. Ants eat it and bring it back to the nest to eat and then explode. I can't verify they actually explode, but that's the mechanism of action. AFAIK boric acid and DE aren't harmful to humans, and corn and rubbing alcohol are usually fairly safe.
- teamspirit 3y ago
- bee_rider 3y agoI guess growth regulators must be pretty well tested because the concept is inherently quite scary, but it is still a bit scary to an uninformed person like myself, haha, so I’ll ask the dumb question. No side effects in humans, right? Your customers could still have kids?
- wincy 3y agoIt’s a good question. I treated my own apartment building for roaches many years ago, five years later had a completely healthy kid, she’s 8 now. For the sake of full disclosure, my second kid has a pretty major birth defect (spina bifida) but this was after the first healthy kid and before we developed a roach problem at our current house (one of the home care nurses actually brought them in) and treated for that, and many many years after I’d stopped being an exterminator, so the timelines of exposure -> birth defect don’t really line up. The spray isn’t an aerosol, you apply it under corners and in places kids shouldn’t be able to reach. I’m not a chemist, but I know you’d have a real bad time if you drank it straight.
- bee_rider 3y agoI always worry about the poisons for creatures that want our food because, well, they seem likely to track it into the place we keep our food! But I guess the plan is mostly not to eat food from containers that the roaches have gotten into in the first place.
- wincy 3y agoIndeed, chemicals are scary, we trashed our entire pantry. It’s just not worth the risk. When you spray the focus for roaches is generally on cracks and crevices though, places roaches like to hang out and places humans shouldn’t be very often. It took about three months after spraying the growth regulator to have them fully disappear from the house.
- tzs 3y agoFrom what I've found online about IGRs they mimic hormones that control parts of the insect's life cycle. They might, say, cause something to happen earlier or later than it naturally should have occurred. There are many things in an insect's life cycle that have to occur at the right time for the insect to reach adulthood and reproduce. Screwing up the timing doesn't kill the young insect, but if it makes it so it will never reproduce. Keep doing that to the insects in a place for a few generations and they die out. Most of us probably do not want to do this, but cockroaches are in fact edible by humans. If IGRs mimic cockroach hormones, then eating a small amount of cockroach IGRs should not be any worse than eating some cockroaches.
- gluczywo 3y ago[flagged]
- joenot443 3y agoHang on, you think this guy's being paid by the makers of Gentrol to make this comment? They seem to be to just enjoy talking about the products they've used in the past, I don't think that makes them a paid shill. I scrolled their comments too - if someone's actually paying them to promote this stuff I don't think it's money well spent.
- dmoy 3y agoAlso don't get it. Took a scan over the last two weeks and didn't see a single other product pushed. Doesn't look like shill to me. Then I'm biased from previously Reddit moderating a large sub, and the shills were... egregious, obvious, and neverending.
- BlackJack 3y agoAfter reading your comment, I checked their history. The account has 7k+ karma, and if they're professional marketer they are promoting: * DALLE * Stable Diffusion * Tabletop RPGs * Sega CD * Nice suburban housing * Neuralink * Cliffnotes etc etc. It just sounds like a normal person talking about things they like or interests.
- wincy 3y agoHaha it’s a new one being accused of being a shill! It’s so obvious, I’m in the pocket of Big chem, Big Open Source AI, and Big Tabletop! Stable Diffusion and Zöecon (makers of Gentrol) are gonna send those checks any day now…
- pandaman 3y agoGiven that roaches were affected by the GHI it appears they were immune to other pesticides and were not simply evading bait/poison? It could be the issue with the pesticides sold to consumers being too weak (understandable, as some consumers will try to consume those despite any warning labels and the vast majority won't be using any PPE while applying).
- wincy 3y agoI don’t think it’s an issue of pesticides being “too weak for consumers”. You can buy all the same stuff as an exterminator[0] (use PPE and follow the labeling, don’t break laws, etc), but when you spray you’ll notice a huge knockdown, hundreds will die, but it only takes a breeding pair to get right back to an infestation in a few months. Generally when doing roach infestation treatments you do a multi tiered approach, with max legal mixes of pesticide + growth inhibitors in your spray then putting down bait in spots that you DID NOT spray (or they won’t ingest the bait). They’re just resilient little buggers. Spiders are actually harder to treat, but most people don’t end up with spider infestations. And then bed bugs are in a class of their own in terms of awfulness and difficulty of elimination. [0] https://www.domyown.com https://www.domyown.com
- rascul 3y agoWhich roach bait products have you had success with?
- pandaman 3y agoI do buy industrial strength pesticides on Amazon but apparently if you were to buy off a reputable supplier you'd need to give your exterminator credentials. I spray Bayer's Polyzone outside and use Tempo between walls/floor and cabinets and see a dead roach inside every quarter or so (there are commercial food establishments nearby so roaches are just roaming the streets). Never bothered with GHI as the pesticides already do a great job.
- tsss 3y agoIn Germany you certainly can't. They would outlaw handsoap if they could get away with it.
- capybara_2020 3y agoAny suggestions for mosquitoes? It feels like the roach problem is a solved problem. But mosquitoes not so much.
- mshockwave 3y agoI know many tropical countries have successful stories fighting mosquitos by simply removing every single place that might contain water: ponds, flower pots etc.
- wincy 3y agoMosquitoes I’d normally focus on doing a full yard treatment of a granular, we’d use bifenthrin back in my day, no idea what they’re using now (but bifenthrin is still on sale), you can use a spreader from Home Depot and it just takes a light dusting. But as a sibling comment said, making sure your gutters don’t have standing water, or that there are little ponds without fish, is going to be your best bet. A big problem is going to be stuff near you, as their range can be 1-3 miles. So, live in a well developed area with lots of people around taking care to avoid mosquitoes? You’re right it’s a hard one.
- notatoad 3y agoit's not going to eradicate them, but if you just want your patio clear for an evening thermocell (and the knock-off refills from aliexpress) work great. removing standing water on your property is a good start, but mosquitoes are a lot more mobile than roaches, so you'll need to do a lot bigger area than a normal residential lot for it to be very effective.
- quickthrower2 3y agoDeet. You just need to keep em off you. Also fine fly screens reduce it to an outside problem.
- 1ifecoder 3y agoTotally agree about using bait with reproduction control for roaches. I tried almost every roach control thing from Walmart and Home Depot and called multiple exterminators, but then I found Vendetta Plus Gel Bait. It's a birth control-based Gel bait that kills all German roaches hiding in the house. Wish the big stores would sell only that instead of all this other useless crap.
- artur_makly 3y agodo they make one for Argentine/Porteño roaches?
- plasma_beam 3y agoInteresting, wasn’t previously aware of Vendetta. I feel like all conversations about eradicating roaches need to distinguish between 1) getting rid of german cockroaches and 2) getting rid of any other cockroach. I’ve had less success with the former, especially within a row home in Baltimore built in the 1910s. You need to get in the walls and under floorboards to eradicate the issue with the germans.
- HeyLaughingBoy 3y ago> essentially endless reservoir of new roaches We have a similar problem with box-elder bugs. About 3 years ago there was a massive explosion of them statewide and now we have thousands coming into the house every fall and staying until summer. They don't seem to live very long, but reproduce rapidly and since we have a lot of box-elder maples on the property, among many other trees, there's a constant supply of them. They're harmless, but ugly and annoying as hell and so far impossible to get rid of.
- mountainofdeath 3y agoAlso, cats. I now have two cats and now I average 1-2 American roach sightings a year.
- wsc981 3y agoI've seen a chicken eat a roach when I threw it outside a home. So I guess on the countryside, chickens can also be an option.
- quickthrower2 3y agoGetting rid of an infestation of roaches in a detached home is much easier than out of an apartment. It is pretty much impossible! But you can seal up holes.
- rvba 3y agoWhat is a difference between growth regulator and insecticide?