Cockroaches becoming resistant to most chemical insecticides
sciencemag.org
sciencemag.org
Boric acid has no resistance.
Bay leaves repel about every insect known to man. Roaches hate bay leaves and will not be in the same area with them.
Editing to say that bay leaves can be crushed in a coffee grinder, put in a plastic ketchup/mustard bottle as a powder, and the resulting powder "puffed" into areas where they have been. This can be done outside as well. Combine this with orange oil concentrate and your house will be insect free fairly quickly. Cheap, too.
Editing to add, here in the south, loads of people also buy concentrated orange oil from places like Tractor Supply and mix it with water in a pump sprayer. Spray the permimeter of your house and zero insects will cross it. It's toxic as hell to the insects because it dissolves their bodies, but non-toxic to cats, dogs, lizards, etc. They will NOT develop a resistance to being melted by the citric acid.
>Boric acid also has the reputation as "the gift that keeps on killing" in that cockroaches that cross over lightly dusted areas do not die immediately, but that the effect is like shards of glass cutting them apart. This often allows a roach to go back to the nest where it soon dies.
edit: found the article,
>All of the tested resistance intervention strategies selected for increased resistance to all AIs applied in field treatments except boric acid....Our results also showed non-significant, but nonetheless elevated cross-“tolerance” towards boric acid in some instances.[0]
So it's probably noise in the data. Boric acid is different from the rest of the substances studied. It may not be all that effective however, according to the paper, is my take.
Broadly speaking, couldn't they just develop a change to the structure of their exoskeleton? I can see how it might be less likely than a chemical resistance, but it still seems possible.
Read my comment again.
Thank you.
I never said it wasn't possible, I said it wasn't plausible for it happen on short scales of time such as this study.
You're being pedantic, but you're still wrong.
For an insect with a waxy cuticle over their exoskeleton, walking over diatomaceous earth is basically like John McClane in Die Hard, running in bare feet over broken glass. Except instead of bleeding to death from the lacerations, the water in their hemolymph diffuses out at a faster rate through the scratches in their cuticle, and they dehydrate to death. The glasslike skeletons of diatoms are hard, sharp, and insoluble in water at neutral pH.
Boric acid has to be ingested. It's a chemical poison. It works fine when added to bait. Sprinkling it as a powder won't work as well, as the insect would have to be dusted with it over their body, and then groom themselves shortly thereafter to remove the powder. Walking through it just dusts the ends of the legs. It works especially well with ants, who will carry poisoned baits back to the colony, but only if you add it to sugar or peanut butter.
As boric acid is softer than glass, and soluble in water, I wouldn't count on it as an insect-killing abrasive.
We can all blame Wikipedia user Rfc1394, who added the text to the Boric Acid article at 10:05, 23 June 2017, apparently with a citation to the EPA R.E.D. factsheet, which does not contain anything remotely close to the text added.
Here's one of many. This one is from the National Pesticide Information Center which operates out of Oregon State University in partnership with the EPA (OSU has a large focus on agricultural research.)
> It can also scratch and damage the exterior of insects.
The falsifiable hypothesis is that crystalline boric acid can kill an insect without being ingested, by a purely mechanical action.
Sassolite (boric acid) has a Mohs hardness of ONE. Please understand why I might be skeptical of its supposed reputation for killing things by scratching them. Minerals with low Mohs hardness, like graphite, talc, and yes, also boric acid, are used as lubricants.[0]
I also question whether those multiple sources in support are truly independent, as I have seen several search results that quote the Wikipedia article verbatim.
This paper investigates a far more likely method of action: http://zero.sci-hub.tw/673/f8d7a6469e96789d8c958eb3c4efdc46/...
I didn't bother checking the other claims that logfromblammo made before my previous comments, I accepted them at face value, but I did this time; Boric acid has a hardness of 3 not 1 as he claimed. Diatomaceous Earth has a hardness of 1-1.5. [0][1]
I looked at the source for the wikipedia claim that logfromblammo described so: "which does not contain anything remotely close to the text added". The source does support the claim in wikipedia. [2]
>Pesticide products containing boric acid and its sodium salts are registered in the U.S. for use as insecticides, fungicides and herbicides. As insecticides, some act as stomach poisons in ants, cockroaches, silverfishand termites, while others abrade the exoskeletons of insects.
The foundational premise behind his original post "unsourced wikipedia edit mislead other websites" is flat wrong. And on top of that, his reasoning for why boric acid wouldn't be a good abrasive "mohs hardness of 1" is also wrong, and egregiously so when the infamous Diatomaceous Earth that he claims is being mistaken for boric acid has a mohs hardness of 1-1.5! It's an irrelevant argument.
My initial diagnosis of logfromblammo being the one who was confused was absolutely correct. Very disappointed in both of you. Hopefully many people weren't mislead by being convinced by logfromblammo as you were.
[0] http://www.americanborate.com/all-about-borates/borate-appli... -- another source about the abrasive properties + boric acid hardness
[1] https://www.tedpella.com/company_html/hardness.htm -- boric acid hardness
[2] https://web.archive.org/web/20080406065032/http://www.epa.go... -- the wiki source that was incorrectly identified as not supporting the claim
I can easily imagine a commercial pesticide targeted at ants and roaches that contains borates, sugar, and diatomaceous earth, because that is exactly what I use in my own kitchen, made from the individual components. It is effective, and has low toxicity to humans and pets. But to be clear, it is abrasive because the D.E. component is abrasive, not from the boric acid.
D.E. is actually the only powdered pesticidal substance I am aware of that kills via mechanical means.
First: The wikipedia source (EPA R.E.D. factsheet) you said didn't "contain anything remotely close to the text" actually does.
>Pesticide products containing boric acid and its sodium salts are registered in the U.S. for use as insecticides, fungicides and herbicides. As insecticides, some act as stomach poisons in ants, cockroaches, silverfishand termites, while others abrade the exoskeletons of insects. [0]
Second: Boric acid has a hardness of 3 not 1 as you claimed. Diatomaceous Earth has a hardness of 1-1.5. [1] [2] This just about blows a hole in every point you've yet tried to make.
I know I won't get an apology, or probably even a concession of your error, but I am posting this reply for posterity -- so other's aren't mislead.
[0] https://web.archive.org/web/20080406065032/http://www.epa.go... -- the wiki source that was incorrectly identified as not supporting the claim
[1] http://www.americanborate.com/all-about-borates/borate-appli... -- another source about the abrasive properties + boric acid hardness
[2] https://www.tedpella.com/company_html/hardness.htm -- boric acid hardness
Boric acid, or B(OH)3, is the mineral sassolite, and has Mohs hardness 1. [0]
Boric anhydride, or B2O3, has a Mohs hardness of 4. [1] It is not boric acid. It converts to boric acid in the presence of water, and is hygroscopic, so will also do so in the presence of humidity.
Borax, or Na2B4O5(OH)4•8(H2O), has a Mohs hardness of 2-2.5 . It is not boric acid. It converts to boric acid in the presence of strong acid, and is considered a hydrated sodium salt of boric acid.
Diatomaceous earth is a sedimentary material, not a pure mineral. It has components of different hardness, the relevant factor being the crushed frustules of ancient diatoms, or diatomaceous silica. "The ultimate hardness of the diatom skeleton is between 4.5 and 5 on the Mohs' scale.... The friability, or the propensity of the skeleton to break down, rather than to abrade, renders a measurement of hardness meaningless without also a consideration of the particle size." [3]
The "not even close" text was the actually quoted text "the gift that keeps on killing". Quoted from the cited source? No. The other dubious hyperbolic phrase was "the effect is like shards of glass cutting them apart", which also does not appear in the cited source. "Shards of glass" does bring to mind a broken diatom frustule, which is literally a shard of sharp silica when viewed under a microscope. There's quite a step up in intensity from "related chemicals may be abrasive" to "this exact chemical is like sharp shards of glass".
Your sources are a company that sells microscopes and "about us" copy for a company that sells mineral borates. I'm not certain what borate it has with a Mohs hardness of 3, but that means it can scratch a fingernail. Try it at home. Grow the biggest boric acid crystal you can, and then try to scratch your fingernail with it. About the only thing holding it together as a solid at all is hydrogen bonding and van der Waals forces. There is nothing there chemically to give it hardness. Individual molecules flake off readily.
So no, I will not apologize or concede.
[0] http://webmineral.com/data/Sassolite.shtml
[1] https://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/compound/boric%20anhydride#...
[2] http://webmineral.com/data/Borax.shtml
[3] https://www3.epa.gov/ttn/chief/old/ap42/ch11/s22/reference/r...
Orange oil, bay leaves, and baking soda/sugar mix are all non-toxic to humans and animals, and all cheap. And they all work very well.
Where I live, the only insects I will not kill are the spiders. They hang out under my roof line and eat all the bad flying insects like mosquitoes.
Any tips for mosquitoes when you can’t rely on spiders (or geckos) alone?
You can also build bat houses. Bats feed almost exclusively on mosquitos. They eat more than their own body weight in them.
There is a great story behind this and I dug deep into the research and history dozens of links long but this might inspire you
2. I actually like ants, unless you're talking about the really nasty ones like army ants or red fire ants. I don't mind them in my house, stealing my food; I just don't want to accidentally kill them. Some people raise them in formicariums (like aquariums, but for ants). I used to have a formicarium when I was in Canada, but have been having trouble trying to start a Carebara affinis or Carebara diversa colony in Hong Kong. Ants, like a lot of other apocrita, are actually quite "hygiene-conscient", almost to the point of OCD. Ants are also pollinators and scavengers that clean up the ground by carrying whatever they can eat into their nests. I have never heard about ants being vectors of human-affecting diseases.
TL;DR: Try not to kill the ants.
In my opinion, if you have any kind of spider infestation on your property, then you have something else to worry about. Spiders need food to thrive, which usually means insects or other arthropods, which in turn means you have an infestation of other arthropods.
So why are you having a bug infestation in the first place? Are you leaving food crumbs all over the place? Do you have damp places where fungi and moss will grow? Insects and all kinds of critters really like those conditions. If you fix those, your insect and (consequently) spider infestation will most likely be gone.
In the case of mosquitoes, we are the food, so you can’t fix that, but you can clear out bodies of still water, which will decimate the number of mosquito larvae.
Killing them (with insecticides) only fixes the symptoms, not the root of the problem.
> Bay leaves repel about every insect known to man.
When you mention bay leaves, do you mean laurus nobilis or a different species? Could you specify the Latin name please?
I tried coffee powder at the back door to keep ants out.
I tried egg shells to protect our strawberry plants from beetles and caterpillars.
Neither worked... well, maybe they somewhat worked, who knows?
Just to be clear: "baking soda" is Bicarbonate of soda (aka. bicarb soda, sodium bicarbonate)?
Mix in equal proportions?
It's a dry mix, not with water?
But broadly speaking, I have to at least be a little skeptical - if all of these things are such easy fixes with no cost to human health, why are we even having this conversation about insecticides? Why was the market created in the first place? Is it just good advertising?
I have successfully used these to combat insects inside my home. My wife does not like the smell of the orange oil, so I use it judiciously inside (laundry room), but outside around the perimeter. My children aren't exposed to toxic chemicals, but the bugs don't cross the perimeter much. Orange oil appears as "expensive" per liter, but it's concentrated, so I mix it in a gallon sprayer with water and spray. I might actually try soaking bay leaves in the water with the orange oil overnight. In this heat and humidity, the resulting water just might be really nasty for insects.
My grandmother swears by spreading cayenne pepper in lieu of bay leaf powder.
I think the market sees an opportunity, despite health risks, to market this stuff as an easy solution, but it's like doctors prescribing antibiotics for everything. It's efficacy is wearing thin as insects develop an immunity. I guess nature knows a thing or two about handling insects, so I appeal to the non-toxic stuff as much as possible.
We zap flies with an electronic zapper (looks like a tennis racket). There's a couple of tricks I learned from it but yeah just make sure you clean up the mess. The zapper resides on the fridge because we got a young human being frolicking around.
It might be the same as when people insist on treating a (viral) cold with antibiotics. Not only are they the wrong kind of treatment, they are also a massive overreaction.
Perhaps boric acid is not the kind of thing you can make massive profits from.
No, but you encourage the selection of the organisms who have a resistance to citric acid, or whatever substance you are using. I think it's very presumptuous to say that by killing everything with a substance you aren't selecting for that resistance.
1. Incomplete treatment -- apartment buildings are large and exterminators likely can't access all interior spaces, providing ample breeding ground.
2. Reinfestation from outside sources -- roaches live in all kinds of tight spaces (e.g. corrugated cardboard boxes), and the number of people in an apartment virtually guarantees cross-contamination.
3. Inadequate amount of pesticides applied.
I'm hesitant to jump to the conclusion that neurotoxins are failing without removing other, much more likely factors.
Too many cat's is a huge problem. They carry unique diseases, most notably those transmissible to your pet cats. Also, toxoplasmosis gandhi which will kill large mammals in an area, including whales. It also infects humans through under-cooked meat. Cat scratch fever. Cats can also transmit whatever local diseases and parasites other mammals carry, but effectively as they tend to live in large colonies close to humans.
Cats murder your local bird populations, which in my area, includes a number of endangered species. I'm sure in other areas, there might be other endangered creatures cats remove.
And finally, there's the typical nuisances of getting into food stores and trash, dying on motorways, feces accumulation (even before considering diseases), and noise complaints.
Further a large feral cat population creates rabid, cat-hating humans which IMHO is also an issue.
... I had to check [0]: at least mountain gorillas can survive temperatures below freezing.
I used to burn leaves with a magnifying glass in the sun as a kid. Once, I hovered the infernal dot over an ant and watched his abdomen pop. I then observed, in zoomed-in horror, as the poor thing kept trying to feel its missing abdomen and then clean its own juices off its antennae. Other ants would come and inspect the dying ant and their antennae would tap each other's. The fallen ant was then carried back to the hive, and I felt so bad that I spent the afternoon clearing a path for the highway of ants.
To this day, I feel bad killing ants and will try to avoid it, like blowing them off my patio table before scrubbing it. It gets a brow-crinkle from my friends, though.
I use this as one part of a multi-pronged approach, dusting around areas they would need to cross to get into the house. It's super-cheap and lasts a long time.
It does need to stay relatively dry, though. When I've needed to repair drywall on occasion, I dust a bunch in the opening figuring it will basically last forever and not get wet.
I also use a bait with boric acid placed in various random areas. I also use a product that slowly emits a vapor in closed areas that basically neuters any roaches that get near it (for places like under the sink). Finally I used Home Defense spray around the outside.
I treat the condo once every three months, and it takes about 30 minutes. I've seen maybe two cockroaches in the past few years, and both were belly-up.
In the Union, things like dichlorvos were used very liberally, even inside living quarters. That eventually led to roached evolving resistance to just every insecticide.
What has lead to their near extinction after the Soviet Union's collapse was rising income levels, and better sanitation.
It's cheap. It wipes out mold spores too.
A downside is that stuff like cloth can get bleached. Metals may get discolored.
This is good for the primary role of roaches, to be the cleanup crew for all sorts of organic matter in nature and helping in the breakdown cycle. But if you were inclined to use them as food, you'd have to maintain a much more controlled (farmed) environment.
By way of comparison, the wild snails you migh eat in France are first fed with a diet of clean lettuce for a week to help purge them of whatever they were munching on in the wild. And they only eat plants to begin with…
In fact, the only gator meat that can be sold legally is farmed gator.
Perhaps in the future every building will have a fleet of tiny robots roaming around functioning like macrophages. Maybe iRobot could come up with something.
Perhaps the better model is army ants, or driver ants. I read they will sweep through a village and kill or drive out roaches, spiders, mice, and other vermin. The human inhabitants welcome them. Like all ants and termites, they're individually dumb, but the colony can accomplish a lot. So maybe the answer is thousands of one-inch crawling robots which bite anything that moves.
True, but resistance is not the only evolutionary adaptation available. For instance, behavioral adaptations might make them more difficult for robots to capture.
All of these have blowback, however.
Not so hot as they were hyped up to be during the 70's and 80's.
Then my mother moved in and I had to put her stuff in the garage.
Now I have roaches and I can't seem to get rid of them myself. I need to contact a bug guy. I hope I can be rid of this infestation.
Cockroaches infest all urban areas. If you’re around a dense population of humans, you got them. If you’re in the US south, you got them. If you’re in the hood, you got lots of them. If you’re in an area with lots of transient people, you’re near them.
My dad was a fireman. I recall him describing an apartment fire where they encountered a “moving wall” in a stairwell, a 5ft square cluster of roaches trying to escape the flame. When they ran into situations like that, they removed their gear and rode back in their underwear if necessary.
Not in all urban areas - they're really not very common in the UK. There's only a couple of smaller species here and they're pretty rare so that people may have never seen one.
Here in DC, we get them, but generally only in homes that aren't kept clean - which can a problem in large apartment buildings, as it only takes one slovenly neighbor or poorly tended garbage area to let a colony grow and become a visible nuisance.
And what about Europe? Probably too cold in most of the continent, but present in Mediterranean regions?
Seems like a U.S exclusive bug.
As with other areas they live in or near garbage areas, but as far as I can tell not as common as one could think. I don't recall seeing any for example during garbage collecting emergencies. They could be present in homes though, especially old ones where small cracks in concrete or wood can offer a place to hide. That was the case of a 4th floor apartment I lived in over 30 years back where we were never able to find the source of those bastards. That wasn't an invasion, just 2 or 3 a week, so we weren't that pressured to call for someone to eradicate them. The solution came totally unexpected: one day my father brought a cat into that house and from that moment although we keep finding those 2 or 3 cockroaches per week, they were dead. Some time passed by, and one day I found the cat scratching near a baseboard corner; he just found the small crack the roaches used to live in and killed all those coming out of it. We sealed the crack and never saw a cockroach after that. I moved two times since then, and although my father kept that cat, I soon got two, and besides being wonderful companions, they kill anything entering the house uninvited, including bigger nasty mosquitos.
Friends at university said they have plenty in dorms, but a visit made it self-explanatory.
The main problem is that, like rodents, they can be a major health hazard as passive disease carriers. A pet rat is as different from a wild rat as a pet roach is as different from a wild roach.