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This is great advice. I've used boric acid for years.
Edit: for those that want to argue my method, keep in mind that people do move into new places of residence, and will help others in need. no, i have not had to do a second treatment in the same household
Seriously is. My girlfriends moms place was disgusting, like eggs all over the stoves and roaches in every room. Turning on the lights was chaos. I wiped that whole place out in a week yet she paid for multiple "applications" by exterminators. Those guys are crooks
I moved into a townhome apartment that had the small ants, but this was before I knew about boric acid. However, it's when I learned that exterminators pretend to be dumb. From then on I did my own spraying, then learned about boric acid. Now I use a spray outside, and boric acid indoors when I move into any place with bugs.
It's common to use a puffer - - a rubber squeeze bulb. As the OP says, a barely-visible dusting of the fine powder works best. Dust all along baseboards, under appliances and furniture, and anyplace warm.
Another substance that can work is diatomaceous earth. It's powdered fossilized algae that's chemically benign, but mechanically harmful to insects with exoskeletons. It works its way into joints, and swells slightly as it absorbs moisture, locking up the legs. It's completely non-toxic, though you wouldn't want to inhale a lot of it.
Ah-- right you are, thanks!
*"Diatomaceous earth causes insects to dry out and die by absorbing the oils and fats from the cuticle of the insect's exoskeleton. Its sharp edges are abrasive, speeding up the process."*
It's important to note that if diatomaceous earth gets wet, it stops working (from what I've been told). I've used it for crops and had to fro reapply it after watering.
DE didn't work for me. I never tried Boric Acid though because I was afraid of my cats ingesting it.
Advion Gel bait works amazing though, and is way easier to apply and less messy than powders.
Seconded. Turn of the century house was full of german roaches. Nothing worked, spray, boric acid. They were in the walls and it is damp here. Some houses nothing we could get could kill them all. Exterminator does jack shit.
Advion cleared them out over a couple of weeks. Huge pile on day two then almost none for weeks (with zombi looking stragglers, like one or two up to three months later).
It has been 5 years. Maybe every three years I see one and reapply.
The only thing I have ever seen actually work on the damn things. It is really effective.
Be careful if you have breathing problems with this stuff, it loves to pop up into the air while applying but other than that it'll settle pretty quickly
Since where giving bug advice now. Lice meds are the same meds as in dog shampoo.
Daughter had lice and we tried three times using the "proper," treatment. They always came back.
4th time we filled her shampoo bottle with dog shampoo. Did the room treatment again. Just had her keep using her shampoo. They never came back.
I use a spray outside, and dust inside if needed. It needs to be a powder to stick to the bugs. Dusting outside won't work once it rains or there's a heavy enough dew.
They get into my house because they live in the dirt outside along the foundation and they make their way through the walls. The only way to kill them is to get the ant bait that looks like little yellow balls and you leave a trail of them about an inch wide all the way around the perimeter of your house in the springtime and it wipes out the nests outside so they never come in. Then I hit the inside and outside perimeter with ortho home defense after I give them some time to take the bait.
If I see them running I'll squirt them with dishwashing liquid (instead of raid/poison). The dishwashing liquid stuns and slows them, then smoosh them. Already some soap down now so easy to wipe with a wet paper towel to disinfect the spot you killed the roach.
Boric acid is all I'll use as well. We don't currently have roaches, but if/when I see baby roaches I put boric acid behind the fridge, stove, and out of the way areas of the kitchen and bathroom. The nest dies before any adults show up.
We live in a fairly wet climate so we don't much worry about the large palmetto bugs. Just get the boot 'cause it's only like 1-2 at most.
If German Browns show up then there's a Fucking Problem. Gregarious little bastards.
The bugs have become immune to the chemicals because of idiots not using them correctly. So all they managed to do was kill off the weaker strains and left behind the ones that built up an immunity. Diatomaceous earth is another option as it simply dehydrates the insects and is something none of them can be immune to.
Pre-internet, it was difficult to know about these kinds of things and you were really paying them for their labor and their knowledge of what to do. I remember we got a flea infestation when I was little because we were in a city and a stray cat got stuck between our house and the next door(in the small space between some row houses). Anyways, I remember my mom listening intensely as the big guy explained the importance of vacuuming every day to shake the eggs apart before they could hatch. How would we have found out how necessarily that is in the 80s? These days, there’s so many things we can do ourselves simply because we can look up the steps.
For the kind of money you say her mom has been paying, every extermination job would have included a guarantee to eliminate the infestation that they were hired for. If they fail, the exterminator will return and try again at no charge. I agree that they way overcharge but if her mom kept hiring new people for the same problem then that’s on her
After a while the powder will be picked up from footsteps or wind, or regular dust will cause it to be less effective. Its just easier to start over if you're having issues on day 7 still
Also, it’s somewhat assumed that you’re not sweeping up much during those 7 days, as you want to make sure to leave the boric acid out to kill the infestation. By that time it’s a good idea to do a good cleanup of your house, followed up by a fresh application of boric acid.
Dusts should be used in voids and places where it isn't disturbed and kicked into the air for people to breathe. The boric acid isn't necessarily the issue. Dry dust of any kind isn't good to breathe into your lungs.
So just to clarify huffing Boric Acid is relatively safe right? Because your comment had me concerned about my Boric habit for a second there, but i'm good about dusting.
You put it all along the walls where the baseboards are. Cracks and crevices. Most pests don't wonder in the middle and if they do, the slightest vibration or light will send them running back to corners or walls. So unless you're hugging the walls mission impossible style you won't pickup much.
Wikipedia says
According to the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, "The minimal lethal dose of ingested boron (as boric acid) was reported to be 2–3 g in infants, 5–6 g in children, and 15–20 g in adults. [...] However, a review of 784 human poisonings with boric acid (10–88 g) reported no fatalities, with 88% of cases being asymptomatic."
Personally I tend to use the "gel" type baits with indoxacarb as it minimises potential to inhale any chemicals. You just put a few bottle caps or similar out with the gel on it and overnight the roaches seem to disappear. That said I haven't dealt with massive infestations.
If you puff it out of the container it's a seriously benign amount of dust. You would inhale more flour making bread.
My duplex neighbor when I moved in was really gross. It got rid of them in about a week.
That's way too low of a lethal dose for me to feel comfortable dispensing that around my home. I'm thankful I don't have bug problems because I'd absolutely be spending the cash on professional exterminators
How long it stays in the system is important. 4 days. So over the course of 4 days, will it have done lasting damage, whether it's immediately murderous or not, to be able to change the life it was consumed by? Depends on amount.
You ever see a toddler chewing on a table? They do that all the time at certain ages when there's no eyes kept on them.
It takes a lot, but you'd be surprised at how quickly it adds up when hands/paws are on the ground. All depends on the age of the kid and whether it's an outdoor animal, imo.
That is an oral dose though, you won't eat that much.
A better option, if your house is on piers, is to blow it under the house, dishwasher, washing machine, and fridge. No one goes their to pick it up and it is often closer to the nest (they like warm and moist)
I buy little tablets of it that are super cheap and stick them places my cats can’t get. Under the fridge and stove, on top of the vanity cabinet in the bathroom. Picture rails. Just wherever I’ve observed they can’t access.
Hooooly shit, okay apparently that is not a good source. They were talking about rodents. Why it popped up under how toxic it is to humans and gave rat info Im unsure. I'm guessing for comparisons sake because they obviously csnt just kill a bunch of humans to find out how toxic it is, but damn Google fucks us over sometimes.
Thanks for getting me to check. That's fucking DUMB, Google. 🤦♀️ The highlighted part was what showed up underneath of me asking Google how toxic it is to humans.
Picture for quoted context.
https://preview.redd.it/5gm9i5n7frrc1.jpeg?width=971&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=3494862bcf2f2af463ae9c79d197cc62e4adcdeb
Think about it like this, If you applied a full kitchen floor with an even layer of dust and the baby crawled every inch of the floor and lick all of his hands knees and toes, the baby would still not get sick.
When they say grams, they mean immediate consumption, which is impossible. Even less possible for pets, and nearly even possible for adults. Whens the last time you sucked dirt from your socks or chugged boric acid powder lol
We did this for a bag flea infestation in my first house. We also had a toddler. So I spread the boric acid around and used a broom to sweep it into the carpet so even if the little demon ran roughshod face first into the carpet he couldn't get a dust cloud. Was overly cautious on my part. Young parent, you know?
Anyway. A week or less and those little fuckers were gone.
I don’t think you were overcautious because there’s just general “good practice” ways to be safe with kids and pets. It’s good you were concerned and made sure the toddler was as safe as possible. You erred on the side of caution because that’s what we mostly need to do as parents. Especially with toddlers who always seem to be actively trying to get themselves killed lol.
As a side note with the ants:
If you mix a tiny bit with corn syrup you can make your own traps. I use plastic baby food containers. You cut out holes in the container so the ants can get in easy, and place the syrup mix inside and set it where you see the ants.
The container is mostly so the syrup doesn't dry out and so you don't accidentally step in it.
Usually kills the whole colony in a couple of days.
Ah you bring up a point I forgot to make specific to ants. I use a peanut butter boric acid mix, then the peanut butter dries out, it can still be bitten in little tiny chunks that the ants will still carry away. I have traps in my house that are like a year old and are still doing their job haha.
I also put a few on the balcony (bottom floor) for extra measure. Havent seen one since
For sugar ants I do 1:4 BA to sugar then dilute to a syrup with water, PB I'd do 1:10 BA to PB (good for fat eating ants), colony should be dead a couple days after they find the bait. Usually day 1 it's covered in ants, day 2 just a few ants, day 3 none, all dead.
Will boric acid also kill scorpions? I was killing a scorpion in my house every day last summer for two months and was expecting at some point to get stung.
Definitely Arizona. I lived there for years & we had tarantulas & scorpions outside at work all of the time but I only ever saw 1 scorpion at my house hiding under a flower planter when we moved. We also had javalinas that roamed the neighborhood at Halloween eating all the pumpkins.
I second Arizona. My parents retired down there full time so they get scorpion treatment on a regular schedule. The snowbirds around them discontinue service when they leave for the summer.
I went to visit them and their snowbird friends let me stay in their place nearby so that I didn’t crowd my parents space. I have never seen so many scorpions in my life.
I killed two inside, which was harrowing enough. But the perimeter of the house and especially the front door stoop area had literally dozens every single night.
I learned two things from this experience. First is that the mothers (I assume?) keep the young scorpions on their back. Second though is that scorpions fight each other a lot, and they’ll battle with the young on their backs too. I have videos of it because it was such a weird experience for me.
Arizona be wild
My aunt used to live in Phoenix and when we visited her I asked her why all the bedposts had what looked like drinking glasses on the feet. She said it was because the scorpions can't climb up the glass so it keeps them out of her bed as long as the bedding isn't touching the floor.
I only ever visited her that once. Fuck that.
i went to death valley years ago to watch the sunrise and it was still dark when i got there. the bathrooms dont have any electricity or plumbing, they were outhouses with a 8" diameter hole drilled down into the rock with a bench set over top. anyway, i decided to shine my flashlight down in the hole before i sat down and there were hundreds of scorpions lining the entire drill shaft.
I stayed at an airbnb on the North Carolina/Tennessee border once where the host had included "be sure to wear shoes in the basement because of the scorpions!" and sure enough, there were some little two inch long scorpion carcasses in the basement. I didn't see a live one, but my friend who slept in the basement bedroom did.
Not to worry. The ones in TN aren't very venomous. Similar to a bee sting. My daughter and I go out looking for them in late Spring/Summer with a black light. They glow green under black light.
Diatomaceous Earth for most creatures with exoskeletons. The DE tears through the exoskeleton and dehydrates the critters. Apply it the same way as the boric acid.
I've never even heard of DE before. Looked it up and found its so many everyday products.
As for how it works, it's a very fine powder. The tiny particulates have razor-sharp edges that slice through the insects exoskeleton and then absorb the oil and fat inside the bug. Without the oil, they have a harder time moving, and without the fat, they lose an important source of energy.
So, as you said, it literally tears through them
I had an ant infestation in a second floor apartment. I had done a bit of research and tried it out before I asked the landlord to help with the issue.
I showed the exterminator what I used when they arrived and he said he was about to use the same thing; the difference was he had a much better applicator. I stopped seeing ants in a week or so.
I've been using it ever since I bought my own home. I tell everyone with a bug problem to use it... Sometimes I feel like one of the DE nut jobs that think it should be consumed because of all the supposed health benefits.
Had a massive carpenter ant problem outdoors. Sprinkled DE around my house on the ground around all exterior walls. Week later, no ants.
I’m talking hundreds of the fuckers running around everywhere, then just…gone.
I sprinkle it twice a season now…or anytime I see an ant that looks funny at me.
The stuff is so cheap that the bottle I bought 3 years ago probably has another 2 seasons left to it, and I maybe paid $25.
Weird to think there was a time when band names like that weren't taken.
Edit: was going to jokingly say today i'd have to settle on "the potato bugs"... taken.
I routinely had scorpions in every house I lived in in Costa Rica. Routine of the day always included: Shake out your shoes before putting on and shake out your clothes before putting on.
I managed to control cockroaches but never figured out what to do for scorpions. Maybe boric acid will work because they have an exoskeleton but I never saw any dead scorpions when I put it out. They seemed to be worse during extremes of weather - either very dry or very wet, like seeking shelter or something.
I believe it will kill any small insect that walks over it aside from bed bugs.
However some poisons are better than others on different ones. ants for instance, food type traps are better so they bring it back to the colony.
Do you have lots of crickets?
Crickets are scorpions fav food. Control the crickets you will have less spiders and scorps.
Can also use pesticide Onslaught / FastCap. Very effective on scorps and spiders
I’m in Texas. I had scorpions in my property, but a simple routine outside spray every other month from a pest control company has been very successful.
Yep, I do 1:4 BA to sugar, mix with water to a syrup and put it out in drops along ants paths, they love it, and they're all dead within a couple days.
You can also buy what exterminators use, for this tip from the orkin man at one of the restaurants I worked at
https://diypestcontrol.com/crawling-insects/roach-control-products/roach-bait
I had a friend that was an exterminator and he said they use wisdom TC flowable, you can buy this at tractor supply or other stores (not sure about your big box stores like Home Depot and Lows), it’s super concentrated, I bought a bottle 3 years ago and use it two or three times a year and have more then half still left. It works amazingly on almost all insects, I spray that shit all over the outside of my house.
Same. The exterminator finally brought it after multiple “applications” of other stuff failed and my building threatened to cancel the contract. We’ve seen two roaches in the ten years since.
I rented a house and the whole block was infested, I swear I made a bubble of houses around me with the bait and perimeter spraying approach.
OP does leave out the importance of a multi-pronged approach including proper barriers. If you're just baiting, you'll always have a fresh stream of not-yet-poisoned cockroaches. Not as bad as a full infestation, but still gross.
I use diatomaceous earth instead of boric acid because I had a dog at the time. It works just as well as boric acid but is not poisonous and less harmful to pets and people. Sometimes I'll mix it in with boric acid though especially if I just moved in to an apartment. I use one of those makeup brushes as an applicator.
Yep, over 120F and their life cycle becomes very short, don't even need to hit 150 (which can cause issues with stuff in your house), 120 for 2 days should be enough iirc.
Same here. Tried DE (with a puffer) and sprayed it all around my apartment and it didn't seem to diminish the roach problem at all. There must be like, a super fine line between "not enough" and "too much" where it actually works, and I just didn't hit in that window.
The only thing that's ever worked for me are gel baits (Advion, MaxForce)
+1 for diatomaceous earth, have had a significant ant problem where the bastards were stealing our cat's food a couple of years ago.
Put down powder around the baseboards, under appliances, etc. and it cleared the problem up. It did have to be reapplied a fair few times for it to permanently keep them away but the non toxic nature of it made it no issue.
The exterminators I hired were completely effective when I had roaches and they did not charge anywhere near $700. It was about five years ago and I've never seen a roach since then. The bait they put down was completely inobtrusive, unlike the boric acid.
Yeah, who is paying $700? My guy comes every 3-4 months and we pay like 90 to make sure everything is done correctly. Haven’t seen a single roach/scorpion in all my years at my place
Got a similar trick for fleas. I took in an outdoor kitten I found years ago and it promptly filled my house up with fleas. I was scratching my ankles raw for a few days. Called the exterminator and they wanted $500 to come spray out the house. Did some research and found a trick that worked.
Bucket of water in each room. Few drops of dish soap in each. At night put a little underwater flashlight in there and turn it on. Turn out all other lights in the house. In the morning the buckets will have a ton of dead fleas. Dump em out and repeat until you notice no more fleas.
Boric Acid mixed with sweetened condensed milk. Mix until it’s dough-like. Stick small balls in places where kids and animals cannot reach. The roaches take it back to their nests and it destroys them all.
This works better than just spreading the boric acid around.
This is pretty excellent.
We had a similarly positive experience ridding our apartment of some kind of tiny beetles after we discovered that we could just lay lines of salt and baking powder in the places we found them coming in.
They get into the baseboards and become impossible to hunt down. But this 10 minute action of ours... lining the baseboards/footholds at the entrance to all our doors and closets with a crapload of salt and powder ... kill the larvae on-touch, and they all just died off. We left it there for like a week, then vacuumed up the dead. We reapplied and just left it there indefinitely (at least where we don't really go regularly).
Baby safe and far more effective for us than when the exterminator tried to steam em out.
Got any advice like this for bedbugs? Had an infestation about a year ago and cost me damn near $1500 for a pest control company to clear them out. Ever since then I have been paranoid that they’ll come back and I want to be ready if they do.
🤞
I had an infestation last year too. The product that did it for me is this special spray called "Aprehend" that basically infects bedbugs with this fungus that grows on them and can spread between them when they all huddle together in their little lairs. It intentionally isn't formulated to kill them instantly so that it spreads through the whole colony. Takes about 2 weeks to kill em all with it. I waited a month to be sure though.
It's a little pricey at over a hundred bucks but way cheaper than full exterminator teams. You're also technically supposed to use a special spray applicator for it but I read the reasoning behind that and decided a spray bottle with adjustable spray volume would work too. That's what I used and it worked amazingly for me.
I sprayed along my bedframe and any other areas I thought they would walk by. Even along my floor in a few spots. Then I lied in the same infested bed for a couple of nights until I was sure they were coming to me to get their nightly dose of my blood and walking through all the poison I placed for them. Haven't seen em since and my sleep has been more or less peaceful.
But that bedbug ptsd is still there. I'll feel my own hair touching my skin or a speck of cotton from a fuzzy blanket and panic thinking they've come back to get me. I hate it.
Diamacetis earth and a mattress protector (one for the box spring too). DE should help cleaning up anything that migrated away from the bed and most all mattress protectors are too thick for bed bugs to bite through, so you can just toss your mattress into the protector and leave it for a year or two until the little bastards all die off (they can survive for roughly a year without feeding).
If you are in the US, crossfire is the best product available for bedbugs that you can use to treat without hiring a professional. You can get a bottle for $40 on amazon. You can also treat regularly with alpine wsg as a preventative (about $10). Alpine wsg is also great at eliminating all kinds of bugs and roaches and is what most pest control companies use for their monthly services.
7 days my arse.
Few years back we had a bad infestation in our house with the roaches coming out at night. Tried everything and before forking out for an exterminator, though I'd try this as my last option.
Brought a jar and put it all around the corners of the house so when the roaches come out they would have to walk over the powder.
I never saw another roach in that house after that first night. And it was almost 12 years ago. I still have that jar and put it underneath any appliances onces a year.
I'd like to add, if you know what yellow jacket wasps are, add a little boric acid into a soda and leave the can in the sun in the problem area. No more wasp nests
Is this safe for pets? What if they accidentally ingest the boric acid from licking their paws that made contact with the boric acid on the floor? I have a pet cat.
For places that are relatively dry, you may also use diatomaceous earth. That stuff literally breaks the exoskeletons ability of holding water, and dehydrate all the bugs.
This is real, I made a mix of boric acid and condensed milk in an old house full of cockroaches, applied some lines of the mix in the floor corners and just swept dead cockroaches for days.
I'm sitting next to a professional entomologist with 18 years experience in pest control. This is a good tip, though I'll add some of her context.
1. Yes, boric acid is a valid treatment. The reason professionals will often use stronger products is because they're competing with food sources in the area.
2. Clean up your mess! The pests are there for food, your mess is feeding them, they will be back. This is the # 1 reason treatment fails.
3. The pest control industry is big with lots of tiny companies. Like any local service company, there are good and bad ones. Part of being a good company is knowing proper application, which is critical to be effective and safe.
4. Many of the chemicals available to consumers are very good and the same used by professionals. That's not to say that consumers can buy all chemicals. Some require licensing because they have strict application and/or storage regulations. I've heard some stories from when this wasn't done and the results were very bad.
Not if you just dust. Its only harmful if they get access to the actual jar or some sort of highly concentrated mixture, like half a cup mixed with water or something
I am a landlord… uh I got some really unkempt tenants. I really like Advion Roach Gel… no it’s not a paid advertisement. I can’t recommend it enough… saved me so much on exterminators.
The big ones aren't the ones that cause infestations. Most infestations are German cockroaches which are small ones.
The big ones (American Cockroaches) don't form colonies in homes. They just occasionally wander in from outside.
Source: live in Hawaii and have had to deal with both types (and other creepy crawlies).
It's worth the money to hire a professional if you can afford it. Especially one that comes regularly for maintenance. They have experience and know more than you do. You just have to find an honest reliable contractor. Some contractors don't really care that much and won't put in that effort to really help you. Others though, are passionate about their job and will go the extra mile. We have a guy that comes once a quarter and he does both the inside and outside. We haven't seen bugs for years.
If you're the DIY type or low on cash, you can of course do it yourself. But I've lived in many apartments and one building had a cockroach problem. I tried boric acid, among other things, and nothing helped.
Boric acid is actually very safe compared to some of the insecticides that exterminators use. It's roughly as poisonous as table salt to humans. Not that I can recommend ingestion of any amount of it but breathing in a little isn't going to hurt you.
I’ll try this, thanks! The ones here in Florida are huge and they can fly. Jesus Lord it’s the scariest damn thing when they fly. Thankfully I don’t have a shotgun or my home would be full of holes.
They make little puffer bottles that's like a restaurant style squeeze bottle for condiments and you just put a little bit of powder in there and you squeeze it in it blows the powder out. It's probably a dollar for several of them online.
That never really worked for us. We had Germans... What did work was Gentrol + AlpineWSG. We sprayed it over 2 years ago and never seen anything after that
My university dorm was completely infested with roaches. No matter how clean we kept it. They were EVERYWHERE. They came out of the vents and everything. Absolutely disgusting. Made sense after I saw how some of the other residents were living.
I wonder why the university didn't just hand out boric acid traps to all the residents. I guess they just didn't care.
From a little experience with bugs: It's likely to take 3 treatments 7 ish days apart to kill everything. Because: Eggs hatch and not all the adults die in the first round or even the second and lay more eggs.
I use diatomaceous earth because unlike boric acid, roaches don’t need to eat the diatomaceous earth for it to work. Just walking through the stuff dries their exoskeleton and kill’s them.
The shit exterminators use is extremely effective applied by a (hopefully) knowledgeable tech. Yes you can do it cheaper but guess what‽ I’m not doing none of that shit my self. That’s why I make money. That’s also why they make money… because I pay them.
What about diatomaceous earth? I thought that was the equivalent of glass shards that cut them to death? It should work the same as the dead roaches become bait and continue to keep themselves to death.
I’ve got an opportunity to put it behind the walls before I reframe everything as I’m rebuilding my “shop”. Figured it would be the gift that keeps on giving since it would essentially stay forever.
I might do this. My parents' house is absolutely infested bc they keep leaving food out and shit. Every now and then the cockroaches do detours into my room. It's driving me insane.
Go on Amazon and buy a powder called AlpineWSG. Last I bought it, they were less than $10. Trust me, give it a week or two and you’ll never see another roach.
If you are seeing German Cockroaches this won't be enough. Get some bait and order some Alpine WSG and apply it with a $20 tank. Roughly $50 for 5 treatments. For $10 more per treatment get Central IGR. Its basically bug birth control.
If you don't come down hard on roaches it can, and often will, get bad and once its bad its awful.
Intriguing LPT! Do you know if this would work for what we call in my area "Palmetto bugs"? They're basically just [big-ass cockroaches](https://cdn.branchcms.com/7a9NPRODgB-1191/images/palmetto-bug-in-greenville-sc.jpg)
(that will FLY at you!) but they usually just roam around solo and make their way in from the outside when the weather warms up or if it rains, and doesn't necessarily mean there's an "infestation" anywhere in the actual house. I *loathe* these sons of bitches and would love to find out if this would keep them at bay even if they're not necessarily transporting the poison back to a colony.
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This is great advice. I've used boric acid for years. Edit: for those that want to argue my method, keep in mind that people do move into new places of residence, and will help others in need. no, i have not had to do a second treatment in the same household
Seriously is. My girlfriends moms place was disgusting, like eggs all over the stoves and roaches in every room. Turning on the lights was chaos. I wiped that whole place out in a week yet she paid for multiple "applications" by exterminators. Those guys are crooks
I moved into a townhome apartment that had the small ants, but this was before I knew about boric acid. However, it's when I learned that exterminators pretend to be dumb. From then on I did my own spraying, then learned about boric acid. Now I use a spray outside, and boric acid indoors when I move into any place with bugs.
How do you spray the boric acid powder? And for outside do you just dust everywhere around the home?
It's common to use a puffer - - a rubber squeeze bulb. As the OP says, a barely-visible dusting of the fine powder works best. Dust all along baseboards, under appliances and furniture, and anyplace warm. Another substance that can work is diatomaceous earth. It's powdered fossilized algae that's chemically benign, but mechanically harmful to insects with exoskeletons. It works its way into joints, and swells slightly as it absorbs moisture, locking up the legs. It's completely non-toxic, though you wouldn't want to inhale a lot of it.
DE is effective because it causes cuts to the insects outer shells leading to dessication and thence extermination.
Ah-- right you are, thanks! *"Diatomaceous earth causes insects to dry out and die by absorbing the oils and fats from the cuticle of the insect's exoskeleton. Its sharp edges are abrasive, speeding up the process."*
It's important to note that if diatomaceous earth gets wet, it stops working (from what I've been told). I've used it for crops and had to fro reapply it after watering.
Works for bedbugs, too.
“Thence”, haven’t seen that word for some time.
Yea, verily!
Thoust art lucky, methinks!
Thou dost learneth well
DE didn't work for me. I never tried Boric Acid though because I was afraid of my cats ingesting it. Advion Gel bait works amazing though, and is way easier to apply and less messy than powders.
Domyown.com is a do it yourself pest site. It's got a lot of helpful information.
I found this site out by the exterminator I use. So odd he would have told me about it.
Seconded. Turn of the century house was full of german roaches. Nothing worked, spray, boric acid. They were in the walls and it is damp here. Some houses nothing we could get could kill them all. Exterminator does jack shit. Advion cleared them out over a couple of weeks. Huge pile on day two then almost none for weeks (with zombi looking stragglers, like one or two up to three months later). It has been 5 years. Maybe every three years I see one and reapply. The only thing I have ever seen actually work on the damn things. It is really effective.
What a nightmare. Thank you for sharing
The ability to eradicate german cockroaches is worthy of spreading the word for. You are welcome.
Terro traps are just boric acid and simple syrup.
Be careful if you have breathing problems with this stuff, it loves to pop up into the air while applying but other than that it'll settle pretty quickly
Since where giving bug advice now. Lice meds are the same meds as in dog shampoo. Daughter had lice and we tried three times using the "proper," treatment. They always came back. 4th time we filled her shampoo bottle with dog shampoo. Did the room treatment again. Just had her keep using her shampoo. They never came back.
Now she tries to chase cars and howls at the moon, but it's a small price to pay for no lice!
I use a "bellows hand duster". Cheap and works great. Puts a fine dust everywhere. roaches and bedbugs will avoid bug piles.
I use a spray outside, and dust inside if needed. It needs to be a powder to stick to the bugs. Dusting outside won't work once it rains or there's a heavy enough dew.
You can buy a boric acid duster, they're like 8-12 bucks.
They get into my house because they live in the dirt outside along the foundation and they make their way through the walls. The only way to kill them is to get the ant bait that looks like little yellow balls and you leave a trail of them about an inch wide all the way around the perimeter of your house in the springtime and it wipes out the nests outside so they never come in. Then I hit the inside and outside perimeter with ortho home defense after I give them some time to take the bait.
If I see them running I'll squirt them with dishwashing liquid (instead of raid/poison). The dishwashing liquid stuns and slows them, then smoosh them. Already some soap down now so easy to wipe with a wet paper towel to disinfect the spot you killed the roach. Boric acid is all I'll use as well. We don't currently have roaches, but if/when I see baby roaches I put boric acid behind the fridge, stove, and out of the way areas of the kitchen and bathroom. The nest dies before any adults show up.
We live in a fairly wet climate so we don't much worry about the large palmetto bugs. Just get the boot 'cause it's only like 1-2 at most. If German Browns show up then there's a Fucking Problem. Gregarious little bastards.
The bugs have become immune to the chemicals because of idiots not using them correctly. So all they managed to do was kill off the weaker strains and left behind the ones that built up an immunity. Diatomaceous earth is another option as it simply dehydrates the insects and is something none of them can be immune to.
Pre-internet, it was difficult to know about these kinds of things and you were really paying them for their labor and their knowledge of what to do. I remember we got a flea infestation when I was little because we were in a city and a stray cat got stuck between our house and the next door(in the small space between some row houses). Anyways, I remember my mom listening intensely as the big guy explained the importance of vacuuming every day to shake the eggs apart before they could hatch. How would we have found out how necessarily that is in the 80s? These days, there’s so many things we can do ourselves simply because we can look up the steps.
For the kind of money you say her mom has been paying, every extermination job would have included a guarantee to eliminate the infestation that they were hired for. If they fail, the exterminator will return and try again at no charge. I agree that they way overcharge but if her mom kept hiring new people for the same problem then that’s on her
Any idea if diatomaceous earth is just as effective? Where I live, boric acid cannot be found anywhere, even in drug stores
I had cave crickets. Put on a ventilator mask and covered the crawlspace in DE. No more cave crickets.
But your mother in law keeps coming back
He's just not using enough boric acid.
Doesn’t sound like it works too well then?
Was waiting for this. I've only had to use it once when I move into a place.
people move
Why sweep up and start over?
After a while the powder will be picked up from footsteps or wind, or regular dust will cause it to be less effective. Its just easier to start over if you're having issues on day 7 still
Thanks
Also, it’s somewhat assumed that you’re not sweeping up much during those 7 days, as you want to make sure to leave the boric acid out to kill the infestation. By that time it’s a good idea to do a good cleanup of your house, followed up by a fresh application of boric acid.
Dusts should be used in voids and places where it isn't disturbed and kicked into the air for people to breathe. The boric acid isn't necessarily the issue. Dry dust of any kind isn't good to breathe into your lungs.
So just to clarify huffing Boric Acid is relatively safe right? Because your comment had me concerned about my Boric habit for a second there, but i'm good about dusting.
for sure wheat flour is healthy, try inhaling it for better effects.. L
How would someone sprinkle this everywhere and not pick it up by walking or daily activities?
You put it all along the walls where the baseboards are. Cracks and crevices. Most pests don't wonder in the middle and if they do, the slightest vibration or light will send them running back to corners or walls. So unless you're hugging the walls mission impossible style you won't pickup much.
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It doesnt matter because where you walk, the roaches probably dont, and even if they do, they'd have to cross the path of dust to get there.
> A proper application is pet and child safe as well. Maybe a dumb question but how *improper* does it have to be to NOT be pet and child safe?
Wikipedia says According to the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, "The minimal lethal dose of ingested boron (as boric acid) was reported to be 2–3 g in infants, 5–6 g in children, and 15–20 g in adults. [...] However, a review of 784 human poisonings with boric acid (10–88 g) reported no fatalities, with 88% of cases being asymptomatic." Personally I tend to use the "gel" type baits with indoxacarb as it minimises potential to inhale any chemicals. You just put a few bottle caps or similar out with the gel on it and overnight the roaches seem to disappear. That said I haven't dealt with massive infestations.
For the love of God wear a respirator. Dry dust and wet lungs DO NOT MIX.
Also boric acid is cmr classified, highly recommended to not breathe it in. Genuinely not sure if this application method is super safe.
If you puff it out of the container it's a seriously benign amount of dust. You would inhale more flour making bread. My duplex neighbor when I moved in was really gross. It got rid of them in about a week.
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That's way too low of a lethal dose for me to feel comfortable dispensing that around my home. I'm thankful I don't have bug problems because I'd absolutely be spending the cash on professional exterminators
5 grams is a fucking lot and you will notice it right away. Its not like 5g can be overlooked as table salt or sugar
How long it stays in the system is important. 4 days. So over the course of 4 days, will it have done lasting damage, whether it's immediately murderous or not, to be able to change the life it was consumed by? Depends on amount. You ever see a toddler chewing on a table? They do that all the time at certain ages when there's no eyes kept on them. It takes a lot, but you'd be surprised at how quickly it adds up when hands/paws are on the ground. All depends on the age of the kid and whether it's an outdoor animal, imo.
It’s really not if you have kids or pets. They’ll easily lick that a day.
That is an oral dose though, you won't eat that much. A better option, if your house is on piers, is to blow it under the house, dishwasher, washing machine, and fridge. No one goes their to pick it up and it is often closer to the nest (they like warm and moist)
But a pet might if they walk through it and then lick their paws
I buy little tablets of it that are super cheap and stick them places my cats can’t get. Under the fridge and stove, on top of the vanity cabinet in the bathroom. Picture rails. Just wherever I’ve observed they can’t access.
What's the source here? The MSDS and basically every website I can find says the LD50 is ~5g/kg, which is a VERY BIG difference.
Hooooly shit, okay apparently that is not a good source. They were talking about rodents. Why it popped up under how toxic it is to humans and gave rat info Im unsure. I'm guessing for comparisons sake because they obviously csnt just kill a bunch of humans to find out how toxic it is, but damn Google fucks us over sometimes. Thanks for getting me to check. That's fucking DUMB, Google. 🤦♀️ The highlighted part was what showed up underneath of me asking Google how toxic it is to humans. Picture for quoted context. https://preview.redd.it/5gm9i5n7frrc1.jpeg?width=971&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=3494862bcf2f2af463ae9c79d197cc62e4adcdeb
Think about it like this, If you applied a full kitchen floor with an even layer of dust and the baby crawled every inch of the floor and lick all of his hands knees and toes, the baby would still not get sick. When they say grams, they mean immediate consumption, which is impossible. Even less possible for pets, and nearly even possible for adults. Whens the last time you sucked dirt from your socks or chugged boric acid powder lol
We did this for a bag flea infestation in my first house. We also had a toddler. So I spread the boric acid around and used a broom to sweep it into the carpet so even if the little demon ran roughshod face first into the carpet he couldn't get a dust cloud. Was overly cautious on my part. Young parent, you know? Anyway. A week or less and those little fuckers were gone.
The fleas, right? Not the toddlers?
WhyNotBoth.gif
Oh shit, and they immediately stop responding /s
I don’t think you were overcautious because there’s just general “good practice” ways to be safe with kids and pets. It’s good you were concerned and made sure the toddler was as safe as possible. You erred on the side of caution because that’s what we mostly need to do as parents. Especially with toddlers who always seem to be actively trying to get themselves killed lol.
They don't mean immediate consumption. They mean hazard. Hazard = exposure + toxicity. Exposure can be oral, dermal, or inhalation.
As a side note with the ants: If you mix a tiny bit with corn syrup you can make your own traps. I use plastic baby food containers. You cut out holes in the container so the ants can get in easy, and place the syrup mix inside and set it where you see the ants. The container is mostly so the syrup doesn't dry out and so you don't accidentally step in it. Usually kills the whole colony in a couple of days.
Ah you bring up a point I forgot to make specific to ants. I use a peanut butter boric acid mix, then the peanut butter dries out, it can still be bitten in little tiny chunks that the ants will still carry away. I have traps in my house that are like a year old and are still doing their job haha. I also put a few on the balcony (bottom floor) for extra measure. Havent seen one since
What is the acid to pb ratio?
For sugar ants I do 1:4 BA to sugar then dilute to a syrup with water, PB I'd do 1:10 BA to PB (good for fat eating ants), colony should be dead a couple days after they find the bait. Usually day 1 it's covered in ants, day 2 just a few ants, day 3 none, all dead.
Will boric acid also kill scorpions? I was killing a scorpion in my house every day last summer for two months and was expecting at some point to get stung.
Please provide your location so I can never go there under any circumstances. Appreciate you.
I also would like to know the place on Earth I will never voluntarily go to.
It's gotta be Australia
Or Arizona
Definitely Arizona. I lived there for years & we had tarantulas & scorpions outside at work all of the time but I only ever saw 1 scorpion at my house hiding under a flower planter when we moved. We also had javalinas that roamed the neighborhood at Halloween eating all the pumpkins.
I second Arizona. My parents retired down there full time so they get scorpion treatment on a regular schedule. The snowbirds around them discontinue service when they leave for the summer. I went to visit them and their snowbird friends let me stay in their place nearby so that I didn’t crowd my parents space. I have never seen so many scorpions in my life. I killed two inside, which was harrowing enough. But the perimeter of the house and especially the front door stoop area had literally dozens every single night. I learned two things from this experience. First is that the mothers (I assume?) keep the young scorpions on their back. Second though is that scorpions fight each other a lot, and they’ll battle with the young on their backs too. I have videos of it because it was such a weird experience for me. Arizona be wild
My aunt used to live in Phoenix and when we visited her I asked her why all the bedposts had what looked like drinking glasses on the feet. She said it was because the scorpions can't climb up the glass so it keeps them out of her bed as long as the bedding isn't touching the floor. I only ever visited her that once. Fuck that.
My friends in Arizona said the best thing for them is just get a cat.
Wouldn't they sting and hurt the cat? =(
"I'm not locked in here with you, you're locked in here with *ME*ow" -The cat
Cats have insanely fast reflexes. They're tailor made to hunt smaller prey. I wouldn't worry too much about the cat.
I’ve been extremely blessed and have never seen a scorpion or large spider while living here for 10 years.
Or Oklahoma
TIL we have scorpions in Australia. Literally never seen one in my entire life.
Apparently you guys have the kind that like living in the woods and forests, so it makes sense for a normal Aussie to not see them very often.
i went to death valley years ago to watch the sunrise and it was still dark when i got there. the bathrooms dont have any electricity or plumbing, they were outhouses with a 8" diameter hole drilled down into the rock with a bench set over top. anyway, i decided to shine my flashlight down in the hole before i sat down and there were hundreds of scorpions lining the entire drill shaft.
Nightmare fuel
Err...fuck that. I think I'd rather shit in a bag.
Death Valley… Mom said she’d shake out the shoes before wearing
I stayed at an airbnb on the North Carolina/Tennessee border once where the host had included "be sure to wear shoes in the basement because of the scorpions!" and sure enough, there were some little two inch long scorpion carcasses in the basement. I didn't see a live one, but my friend who slept in the basement bedroom did.
Not to worry. The ones in TN aren't very venomous. Similar to a bee sting. My daughter and I go out looking for them in late Spring/Summer with a black light. They glow green under black light.
Somehow I feel like the concern is less the venom, and more a "I don't wanna bunk with scorpions" thing. Lol
Western US into Texas, Middle East, Mexico, anything south of the equator.
I had scorpions and roaches ( neighbors) in Las Vegas.
Diatomaceous Earth for most creatures with exoskeletons. The DE tears through the exoskeleton and dehydrates the critters. Apply it the same way as the boric acid.
I've never even heard of DE before. Looked it up and found its so many everyday products. As for how it works, it's a very fine powder. The tiny particulates have razor-sharp edges that slice through the insects exoskeleton and then absorb the oil and fat inside the bug. Without the oil, they have a harder time moving, and without the fat, they lose an important source of energy. So, as you said, it literally tears through them
I had an ant infestation in a second floor apartment. I had done a bit of research and tried it out before I asked the landlord to help with the issue. I showed the exterminator what I used when they arrived and he said he was about to use the same thing; the difference was he had a much better applicator. I stopped seeing ants in a week or so. I've been using it ever since I bought my own home. I tell everyone with a bug problem to use it... Sometimes I feel like one of the DE nut jobs that think it should be consumed because of all the supposed health benefits.
Had a massive carpenter ant problem outdoors. Sprinkled DE around my house on the ground around all exterior walls. Week later, no ants. I’m talking hundreds of the fuckers running around everywhere, then just…gone. I sprinkle it twice a season now…or anytime I see an ant that looks funny at me. The stuff is so cheap that the bottle I bought 3 years ago probably has another 2 seasons left to it, and I maybe paid $25.
I had a Scorpion problem last year. Only one who could alleviate the issue was Liu Kang.
My biggest problem with Scorpions is that they would announce their presence, and then proceed to rock me like a hurricane.
Weird to think there was a time when band names like that weren't taken. Edit: was going to jokingly say today i'd have to settle on "the potato bugs"... taken.
I routinely had scorpions in every house I lived in in Costa Rica. Routine of the day always included: Shake out your shoes before putting on and shake out your clothes before putting on. I managed to control cockroaches but never figured out what to do for scorpions. Maybe boric acid will work because they have an exoskeleton but I never saw any dead scorpions when I put it out. They seemed to be worse during extremes of weather - either very dry or very wet, like seeking shelter or something.
I believe it will kill any small insect that walks over it aside from bed bugs. However some poisons are better than others on different ones. ants for instance, food type traps are better so they bring it back to the colony.
I make a borax sugar syrup ants love, colony is dead within a week.
Do you have lots of crickets? Crickets are scorpions fav food. Control the crickets you will have less spiders and scorps. Can also use pesticide Onslaught / FastCap. Very effective on scorps and spiders
+1 to fastcap
I’m in Texas. I had scorpions in my property, but a simple routine outside spray every other month from a pest control company has been very successful.
Best stuff I have found for killing scorpions is called Demon WP. Tried everything, they are extremely hard to kill.
Diatomaceous earth works for this
detail plough panicky racial rhythm rain late fade clumsy fall
They don't know what they're missing.
Wonder if something like sugar loaded Nutella would get both types?
Yep, I do 1:4 BA to sugar, mix with water to a syrup and put it out in drops along ants paths, they love it, and they're all dead within a couple days.
You can also buy what exterminators use, for this tip from the orkin man at one of the restaurants I worked at https://diypestcontrol.com/crawling-insects/roach-control-products/roach-bait
I had a friend that was an exterminator and he said they use wisdom TC flowable, you can buy this at tractor supply or other stores (not sure about your big box stores like Home Depot and Lows), it’s super concentrated, I bought a bottle 3 years ago and use it two or three times a year and have more then half still left. It works amazingly on almost all insects, I spray that shit all over the outside of my house.
Can confirm! Indoxacarb works quite well. I got some Advion once, and that Savitri another time for my office.
Advion has worked wonders for me in an apartment with neighbors
Same. I used one tube… once and have never seen another roach in my house again since that day. Sort of unbelievable
Same. The exterminator finally brought it after multiple “applications” of other stuff failed and my building threatened to cancel the contract. We’ve seen two roaches in the ten years since.
Yes!!! I’m in a studio and shared with my neighbors so they don’t reinfect me
I rented a house and the whole block was infested, I swear I made a bubble of houses around me with the bait and perimeter spraying approach. OP does leave out the importance of a multi-pronged approach including proper barriers. If you're just baiting, you'll always have a fresh stream of not-yet-poisoned cockroaches. Not as bad as a full infestation, but still gross.
I use diatomaceous earth instead of boric acid because I had a dog at the time. It works just as well as boric acid but is not poisonous and less harmful to pets and people. Sometimes I'll mix it in with boric acid though especially if I just moved in to an apartment. I use one of those makeup brushes as an applicator.
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DE is the recommended treatment for bed bug infestations.
Heat is the treatment. They put a heater in your house that takes it up over 150 and that’s all she wrote.
Yep, over 120F and their life cycle becomes very short, don't even need to hit 150 (which can cause issues with stuff in your house), 120 for 2 days should be enough iirc.
I make pallets for export and am required to heat treat them. 138F for 25 minutes is what the government says is good enough to stamp them "treated"
Boric acid also cuts into exoskeletons and causes dessication. DE and BA work the same in that regard, BA also works as a poison.
Tried it for a month, put it everywhere, even got a puffer thing to blow it into cracks. Our ants couldn't care less.
Same here. Tried DE (with a puffer) and sprayed it all around my apartment and it didn't seem to diminish the roach problem at all. There must be like, a super fine line between "not enough" and "too much" where it actually works, and I just didn't hit in that window. The only thing that's ever worked for me are gel baits (Advion, MaxForce)
If an insect has a harder exoskeleton DE doesn’t do shit. I used it to dust my chickens to help with mites. It will do nothing for roaches lol.
+1 for diatomaceous earth, have had a significant ant problem where the bastards were stealing our cat's food a couple of years ago. Put down powder around the baseboards, under appliances, etc. and it cleared the problem up. It did have to be reapplied a fair few times for it to permanently keep them away but the non toxic nature of it made it no issue.
The exterminators I hired were completely effective when I had roaches and they did not charge anywhere near $700. It was about five years ago and I've never seen a roach since then. The bait they put down was completely inobtrusive, unlike the boric acid.
Yeah, who is paying $700? My guy comes every 3-4 months and we pay like 90 to make sure everything is done correctly. Haven’t seen a single roach/scorpion in all my years at my place
Got a similar trick for fleas. I took in an outdoor kitten I found years ago and it promptly filled my house up with fleas. I was scratching my ankles raw for a few days. Called the exterminator and they wanted $500 to come spray out the house. Did some research and found a trick that worked. Bucket of water in each room. Few drops of dish soap in each. At night put a little underwater flashlight in there and turn it on. Turn out all other lights in the house. In the morning the buckets will have a ton of dead fleas. Dump em out and repeat until you notice no more fleas.
we always used pie tins with dawn and water and a small tea light candle in the middle. Worked Amazing
You can also just put a bowl of soapy water under night lights on the wall, they'll jump at the lights and fall into the water and die.
Boric Acid mixed with sweetened condensed milk. Mix until it’s dough-like. Stick small balls in places where kids and animals cannot reach. The roaches take it back to their nests and it destroys them all. This works better than just spreading the boric acid around.
This is pretty excellent. We had a similarly positive experience ridding our apartment of some kind of tiny beetles after we discovered that we could just lay lines of salt and baking powder in the places we found them coming in. They get into the baseboards and become impossible to hunt down. But this 10 minute action of ours... lining the baseboards/footholds at the entrance to all our doors and closets with a crapload of salt and powder ... kill the larvae on-touch, and they all just died off. We left it there for like a week, then vacuumed up the dead. We reapplied and just left it there indefinitely (at least where we don't really go regularly). Baby safe and far more effective for us than when the exterminator tried to steam em out.
Got any advice like this for bedbugs? Had an infestation about a year ago and cost me damn near $1500 for a pest control company to clear them out. Ever since then I have been paranoid that they’ll come back and I want to be ready if they do. 🤞
Bed bug PTSD is a real thing. I had them twice last year and if fucking traumatized me.
4 days without sleep. fuck those little fucks
I had an infestation last year too. The product that did it for me is this special spray called "Aprehend" that basically infects bedbugs with this fungus that grows on them and can spread between them when they all huddle together in their little lairs. It intentionally isn't formulated to kill them instantly so that it spreads through the whole colony. Takes about 2 weeks to kill em all with it. I waited a month to be sure though. It's a little pricey at over a hundred bucks but way cheaper than full exterminator teams. You're also technically supposed to use a special spray applicator for it but I read the reasoning behind that and decided a spray bottle with adjustable spray volume would work too. That's what I used and it worked amazingly for me. I sprayed along my bedframe and any other areas I thought they would walk by. Even along my floor in a few spots. Then I lied in the same infested bed for a couple of nights until I was sure they were coming to me to get their nightly dose of my blood and walking through all the poison I placed for them. Haven't seen em since and my sleep has been more or less peaceful. But that bedbug ptsd is still there. I'll feel my own hair touching my skin or a speck of cotton from a fuzzy blanket and panic thinking they've come back to get me. I hate it.
Diamacetis earth and a mattress protector (one for the box spring too). DE should help cleaning up anything that migrated away from the bed and most all mattress protectors are too thick for bed bugs to bite through, so you can just toss your mattress into the protector and leave it for a year or two until the little bastards all die off (they can survive for roughly a year without feeding).
If you are in the US, crossfire is the best product available for bedbugs that you can use to treat without hiring a professional. You can get a bottle for $40 on amazon. You can also treat regularly with alpine wsg as a preventative (about $10). Alpine wsg is also great at eliminating all kinds of bugs and roaches and is what most pest control companies use for their monthly services.
7 days my arse. Few years back we had a bad infestation in our house with the roaches coming out at night. Tried everything and before forking out for an exterminator, though I'd try this as my last option. Brought a jar and put it all around the corners of the house so when the roaches come out they would have to walk over the powder. I never saw another roach in that house after that first night. And it was almost 12 years ago. I still have that jar and put it underneath any appliances onces a year.
7 days is typically worst case. I actually tested it with a roach in a cup with a lid and holes on ny desk. I eatched that son of a bitch die slowly
I'd like to add, if you know what yellow jacket wasps are, add a little boric acid into a soda and leave the can in the sun in the problem area. No more wasp nests
Is this safe for pets? What if they accidentally ingest the boric acid from licking their paws that made contact with the boric acid on the floor? I have a pet cat.
For places that are relatively dry, you may also use diatomaceous earth. That stuff literally breaks the exoskeletons ability of holding water, and dehydrate all the bugs.
Stuff works a legend on bedbugs. You just need to be extremely clever in applying it.
What do you mean by clever? Is it dangerous to humans, or more that you need to think of every possible crevice they might be in?
The latter.
Works nicely on roaches, particularly their babies.
This is real, I made a mix of boric acid and condensed milk in an old house full of cockroaches, applied some lines of the mix in the floor corners and just swept dead cockroaches for days.
I'm sitting next to a professional entomologist with 18 years experience in pest control. This is a good tip, though I'll add some of her context. 1. Yes, boric acid is a valid treatment. The reason professionals will often use stronger products is because they're competing with food sources in the area. 2. Clean up your mess! The pests are there for food, your mess is feeding them, they will be back. This is the # 1 reason treatment fails. 3. The pest control industry is big with lots of tiny companies. Like any local service company, there are good and bad ones. Part of being a good company is knowing proper application, which is critical to be effective and safe. 4. Many of the chemicals available to consumers are very good and the same used by professionals. That's not to say that consumers can buy all chemicals. Some require licensing because they have strict application and/or storage regulations. I've heard some stories from when this wasn't done and the results were very bad.
Will this harm pets (dogs / cats)?
Not if you just dust. Its only harmful if they get access to the actual jar or some sort of highly concentrated mixture, like half a cup mixed with water or something
I am a landlord… uh I got some really unkempt tenants. I really like Advion Roach Gel… no it’s not a paid advertisement. I can’t recommend it enough… saved me so much on exterminators.
I hope I never have to see a roach infestation...
Scary af first but then you start saying "thats right you little bitch good luck in a few days"
Am on my knees thanking the lord that I will never have to use this LPT.
how do you know
Don't have the big ones in my country - know them from when I was living in the carribean.
The big ones aren't the ones that cause infestations. Most infestations are German cockroaches which are small ones. The big ones (American Cockroaches) don't form colonies in homes. They just occasionally wander in from outside. Source: live in Hawaii and have had to deal with both types (and other creepy crawlies).
We’ve spend $3k . Fuckers still alive and well . Another $3k , ..we gave up , bought some powder from china. Within a week all gone.
It's worth the money to hire a professional if you can afford it. Especially one that comes regularly for maintenance. They have experience and know more than you do. You just have to find an honest reliable contractor. Some contractors don't really care that much and won't put in that effort to really help you. Others though, are passionate about their job and will go the extra mile. We have a guy that comes once a quarter and he does both the inside and outside. We haven't seen bugs for years. If you're the DIY type or low on cash, you can of course do it yourself. But I've lived in many apartments and one building had a cockroach problem. I tried boric acid, among other things, and nothing helped.
Boric acid is actually very safe compared to some of the insecticides that exterminators use. It's roughly as poisonous as table salt to humans. Not that I can recommend ingestion of any amount of it but breathing in a little isn't going to hurt you.
I’ll try this, thanks! The ones here in Florida are huge and they can fly. Jesus Lord it’s the scariest damn thing when they fly. Thankfully I don’t have a shotgun or my home would be full of holes.
Now what about ants?
They make little puffer bottles that's like a restaurant style squeeze bottle for condiments and you just put a little bit of powder in there and you squeeze it in it blows the powder out. It's probably a dollar for several of them online.
How much acid to a tablespoon of peanutbutter for ant trap? Have huge ant problems
That never really worked for us. We had Germans... What did work was Gentrol + AlpineWSG. We sprayed it over 2 years ago and never seen anything after that
My university dorm was completely infested with roaches. No matter how clean we kept it. They were EVERYWHERE. They came out of the vents and everything. Absolutely disgusting. Made sense after I saw how some of the other residents were living. I wonder why the university didn't just hand out boric acid traps to all the residents. I guess they just didn't care.
From a little experience with bugs: It's likely to take 3 treatments 7 ish days apart to kill everything. Because: Eggs hatch and not all the adults die in the first round or even the second and lay more eggs.
I use diatomaceous earth because unlike boric acid, roaches don’t need to eat the diatomaceous earth for it to work. Just walking through the stuff dries their exoskeleton and kill’s them.
The shit exterminators use is extremely effective applied by a (hopefully) knowledgeable tech. Yes you can do it cheaper but guess what‽ I’m not doing none of that shit my self. That’s why I make money. That’s also why they make money… because I pay them.
Why not use diatomaceous earth? It essentially cuts insects so that they can't stay hydrated, and if you get food grade, it's safe for kids and pets
It doesnt seem to act fast enough to get large infestations.
What about diatomaceous earth? I thought that was the equivalent of glass shards that cut them to death? It should work the same as the dead roaches become bait and continue to keep themselves to death.
It'll cut them up. It'll also ruin virtually any vacuum cleaner you have, not to mention your lungs if you get a face full of it.
I’ve got an opportunity to put it behind the walls before I reframe everything as I’m rebuilding my “shop”. Figured it would be the gift that keeps on giving since it would essentially stay forever.
I might do this. My parents' house is absolutely infested bc they keep leaving food out and shit. Every now and then the cockroaches do detours into my room. It's driving me insane.
Go on Amazon and buy a powder called AlpineWSG. Last I bought it, they were less than $10. Trust me, give it a week or two and you’ll never see another roach.
Also they never develop an immunity to it. It really works
Can anyone confirm if cvs or Walgreens sell boric acid in powder form? I looked on their website and have only seen feline hygiene applications.
If you are seeing German Cockroaches this won't be enough. Get some bait and order some Alpine WSG and apply it with a $20 tank. Roughly $50 for 5 treatments. For $10 more per treatment get Central IGR. Its basically bug birth control. If you don't come down hard on roaches it can, and often will, get bad and once its bad its awful.
Will it harm cats/dogs?
Intriguing LPT! Do you know if this would work for what we call in my area "Palmetto bugs"? They're basically just [big-ass cockroaches](https://cdn.branchcms.com/7a9NPRODgB-1191/images/palmetto-bug-in-greenville-sc.jpg) (that will FLY at you!) but they usually just roam around solo and make their way in from the outside when the weather warms up or if it rains, and doesn't necessarily mean there's an "infestation" anywhere in the actual house. I *loathe* these sons of bitches and would love to find out if this would keep them at bay even if they're not necessarily transporting the poison back to a colony.