Assuming that you have cockroaches in your home, the main priority is eliminating them from your home.
For every cockroach you sight, you can be sure hundreds are hiding in areas around your properties, waiting patiently for the light to go off before coming out. In this article, I will give you a brief answer to the question “what do cockroaches hate.”
Cockroaches are insects with a good sense of smell, which makes them hate any form of pungent smell, essential oil, light, sugar, mothballs, human contact, and noise. They stay in humid, and quiet places and often prefer to move under darkness.
Cockroaches have been blessed naturally with an incredible sense of smell, enabling it to be simple for them to find food and also find a mate. But do you know that the exact sense of smell can be used to eliminate cockroaches?
In this article, five major things can prevent cockroaches from entering your homes, along with eliminating existing cockroaches in the house.
What do Cockroaches Hate? 6 Major Things They Hate
Pungent smell
There are a few smells that cockroaches do not like or cherish, and you can use those smells to chase them away from your home. We have a list of some ingredients that can help in pursuing cockroaches from your home.
- Lavender
Do you know that cockroaches hate the smell of lavender? Assuming that you cherish to grow it (lavender) in your home, precisely in your garden, you are more than halfway to a roach-free home if you can, plant lavender around your home to create an obstacle that even the most determined roaches can’t stand to cross.
Besides, inside your home, you can use lavender oil to get rid of existing cockroaches and prevent new ones from entering. Also, you can dilute the oil and put it in a spray bottle, then spray surfaces where they (cockroaches) have been residing.
- Citrus
As a person, you may cherish the smell of fresh citrus, but know that cockroaches do not smell like it. This indicates that you can make use of this fruit in your kitchen or bathroom to get rid of any lingering cockroach.
Also, you can keep some citrus peels around some of your properties. The cockroaches in those areas will perceive that fresh citrus and know to leave that area. Although you may be required to refresh the smell a couple of times every month, there is a small price to pay if you want to stay in your home free from cockroaches.
- Eucalyptus
As you might know, koala bears may cherish not only the smell but the taste of it. But you should also know that cockroaches hate the smell of eucalyptus. If you do not want to plant it (eucalyptus) in front of your home or you probably do not want to spray your home with fresh eucalyptus oil, you can also consider other options.
There are different methods for using the eucalyptus scent, beginning with essential oils diluted with water and sprayed as a barrier around your home to plantings in front of your home or garden.
In some situations, a natural approach to pest control is the perfect option, and that is undoubtedly correct with cockroaches.
- Garlic
Another ingredient that you can use to chase cockroaches away from your home is garlic. You should know that cockroaches find it difficult to stand the smell of garlic.
You can layout fresh cloves or also make use of garlic powder. For the garlic powder, you can find it at an affordable rate at your local dollar store.
Essential Oils
According to recent studies, it has been discovered that cockroaches hate the sight of essential oils. There are a few major essential oils that are effective in chasing cockroaches away from your home.
- Peppermint Oil
Peppermint oil is not only repellent to animals like rats but also cockroaches. Undiluted peppermint oil can be tricky at times. Attempt mixing ten drops of the oil with a quart of water and spray it in your yard, especially places where you feel cockroaches reside.
- Catnip oil
A study conducted by Iowa state university discovered that a component in catnip oil is repellent to cockroaches. Certainly, spraying your place with catnip oil indicates that you probably be invaded by a bunch of drugged-out cats.
- Oregano Oil
A study, published in the famous Journal of Arthropod-Borne Diseases, examined a range of essential oils on cockroaches. It was discovered that this type of fat could repel 97 percent of cockroaches.
Light
What is it about cockroaches and night time? Are cockroaches charmed to light or repelled by it? And, how can you aid to eliminate cockroaches and keep them away?
Well, almost every cockroach is nocturnal, which indicates they are just active at night. Thus, are cockroaches attracted to light? The answer is no.
Not only that, cockroach does not like or cherish artificial light; they are also not fond of natural light either. As a result of this, you are very unlikely to see cockroaches during the day. Assuming that you do observe a cockroach during the day, it may be as a result that the cockroach got crowded out of its territory or was forced out of hiding because it has no food.
Sighting a cockroach when the sun has not come up indicates that you may have an infestation. Nevertheless, after a short time, cockroaches can adapt to their environment and become acclimated to light.
But what if you only notice one cockroach at night? Does that indicate it was just a scoundrel roach that wandered in? It is possible, but also not likely. Cockroaches are aggressive breeders: thus, their populations can multiply faster.
A general rule of thumb, when you notice a single cockroach, there are likely many others in the surrounding.
Sugar
We might feel cockroaches love or cherish sugar. Well, you are right. Cockroaches will be so happy if you choose to leave cakes, fruits, candy, and juice with high sugar content lying not covered around.
The Pest control businesses discovered it in the 1980s. They noticed that sprinkling sugar in a particular area would leave cockroaches milling around in no time. These pest control businesses used to their merit and began to bait cockroaches with glucose laced with insecticide. The meal eliminated them as they returned to their homes.
Other roaches usually consume the remains of the dead, which is not astonishing since these creatures will eat almost anything. The scavenging insects also got eliminated as the bodies of the dead cockroaches still contained the poison.
This went for an extended period until they (cockroaches) discovered that sugar was killing them. Then they started to resist this sugar. Their senses rapidly adjusted to spot sweet sugar as bitter.
Various pest control businesses found that, too, and changed the glucose with fructose, another type of sugar. The cockroaches were smart also and began avoiding fructose as well.
Scientists traced this astonishing switch to many decades ago when cockroaches first developed the ability to spot sweet but dangerous parts of individual plants they consumed as bitter. That particular skill was hereditarily suppressed when they began to stay around humans and only returned when humans began to poison their food.
Humans touching them
According to recent research, cockroaches hate it when humans touch them. In other words, they can even flee to begin cleaning themselves of the contact they had with the human being. But you should also note that cockroaches do not only like humans touching them, but anything else moving them because they feel that simple contact can cause harm to their existence.
To be clear on this, just as we hate contacting cockroaches, the cockroaches also hate when they reach humans. If you notice in your homes, they usually flee from more massive creatures, be it human or not, because they know that any contact with the gigantic creature might result in death.
Contact with almost any organism could leave a few residues on the roach that could be unfavorable to its survival. When it concerns humans, it is the natural oils that we unintentionally leave on anything we have contact with. That particular oil could interrupt how the cockroach’s body operates.
Mothballs
So we had an investigative series to review if Mothballs actually do repel roaches, so the result was positive. This is why we added mothballs as part of the things cockroaches hate. Just like moths, cockroaches hate the smell of mothballs – which you can take advantage of in your home. You can achieve this by placing mothballs strategically in places like under the kitchen cabinet, furniture cushions, stove, and the kitchen sink. Make the mothball doesn’t come in contact with water.
Conclusion
The majority of the affected are the antennae. They may appear unremarkable to us, but they are essential for their survival. The antennae operate as the creature’s nose and are needed for perceiving food and finding possible mates. Those oils and other factors we’ve listed out will lower the pest’s capacity to view, which is not suitable for the cockroach.
