Wednesday, June 20, 2007

Roaches and Bed Bugs

A neighbor told me what she does to rid her apartment of roaches, and I decided to try it. As one exterminator opined in a previous post, those of us who have roaches as well as bed bugs have found that foggers designed to kill roaches end up irritating bed bugs and scattering them further throughout your home. This does not kill or even harm the bed bugs, but instead makes it that much harder to ensure that you've killed all the bed bugs in your home when you do go after them.

Obviously, an effective roach-killing method that won't affect bed bugs in any way (until I'm ready to kill them) interested me, as I do have both roaches as well as bed bugs. So here is what my neighbor told me to do:

Boil some eggs, then remove the shell and mash up the insides (yolk and white) with a fork. Then add a generous amount of boric acid onto the mashed egg. Using the same fork, lay a few pieces of this mixture onto the kitchen sink, behind the toilet bowl or anywhere else in your home you've seen roaches.

The beauty of this, of course, is that it effectively kills the roaches (and it does, I tried it out last week) without disturbing the bed bugs. That way the bed bug will never see it coming when you actually do go after them.

I advise anyone to try this hard-boiled egg/boric acid mixture in their homes as an alternative to roach fogger which, as I've witnessed firsthand and many people have told me, will only irritate and scatter the bed bugs.

Good luck, and happy hunting!

2 comments:

me said...

I've heard that boric acid is helpful in getting rid of roaches, but I'm hesitant to use it because I have an older dog with some health issues. Any idea as to the toxicity to animals?

Also, I was wondering why egg needs to be mixed with the boric acid - does that attract the bugs? Some accounts I've read where boric acid was used alone.

I only have a "few" bugs in my house (that show themselves, at least) but I want to be rid of them once and for all.

Thanks!

DeathToRoaches! said...

Animals won't eat the boric acid. I've got kittens and they completely ignore the stuff. Since it's in a paste and you apply it to areas like baseboards in the kitchen and behind appliances, you don't have to worry about fumes.

I've used it before and it works well, but it's not so great on it's own if you have a full blown infestation. It does, however, work well at maintaining a bug free space after spraying. Since you don't have that many, I'd recommend trying it.