How To Kill Cockroaches Naturally With Sugar And Baking Soda


Can Baking Soda & Sugar Kill Roaches?
When dealing with pests in your home or apartment, all-natural and homemade solutions are generally preferred over chemical concoctions. One such remedy claimed to work for a cockroach infestation is to use a mixture of baking soda and sugar.

But what’s the real scoop of this method? Can sugar and baking soda really get rid of cockroaches, or is it just a waste of time and money?

Let’s find out!

Why Baking Soda + Sugar Kills Cockroaches

Sugar

Like the majority of living organisms, cockroaches need glucose to survive. For those who skipped chemistry class, glucose = sugar.

The sugar in the mixture has no other purpose than attracting the cockroaches to it and causing them to eat it. This is fairly simple, but we want to do more than just feed our pests, we want them gone!

That’s where the baking soda comes in.

Baking Soda

This is where things get interesting.

First, it needs to be explained that cockroaches have no gastrointestinal mechanism for expelling gas. In more crude terms, the essentially can’t burp or fart.

What does that have to do with anything??

Well, baking soda, when it gets wet, produces a gaseous reaction. This means that when a cockroach eats baking soda, and then drinks water, gas forms inside the cockroach and has nowhere to go.

The result: the cockroach’s stomach literally explodes.

Additional Ingredients

Some experts suggest adding additional ingredients to the mixture, such as powdered yeast, vitamin C, or boric acid. While all of these are completely optional, they can add to the overall effectiveness of the method.

Finding The Right Mixture (How Much Baking Soda And Sugar)


Baking Soda + Sugar = Dead Roaches
If you are going with straight baking soda and sugar, then an even 50/50 mixture should work just fine.

If you are adding any of the additional components listed above, then the other inredient should comprise approximately 10% of the total mixture.

Powdered sugar seems to work best, as opposed to granulated. The particles are much smaller, and cockroaches seem to prefer it.

Baking Soda vs. Baking Powder

Although similar, baking soda is preferable over baking powder. It releases more gas when activated, thus increasing the likelihood of killing the cockroach.

Use baking soda, not baking powder.

Where To Put The Bait For Best Results

Anywhere that you know the cockroaches frequent should work well enough.

It is important to note however that this bait will temporarily increase the amount of cockroaches in the area, as they are drawn to the new and abundant food source.

How Long Will It Take Before It Works?

This infestation remedy will not work immediately, since the cockroaches have to (1) discover the new food source, (2) consume it, and (3) drink water after eating it.

However, you should definitely see a noticeable reduction in the cockroach population within 2-3 days. If not, you may want to adjust your mixture as the cockroaches either aren’t eating it or it doesn’t contain enough baking soda to be “explosive”.

Additional Methods Of Control

Even when you kill all of the cockroaches living in your home, you will still want to think about how to prevent new ones from coming in. If not, you will have to kill them on an ongoing basis.

We have more articles on different methods, but essentially you want to seal off entry points and eliminate food sources. Don’t give cockroaches a reason to live somewhere and they simply won’t.

New Science: Roaches Evolving To Avoid Sugar

New research suggests that due to humans attempting to bait cockroaches with sugar, we may actually be causing cockroach populations to evolve in such a way that they avoid it!

It has been shown, as outlined here, that some cockroaches are now perceiving sugar as bitter, and undesirable.

Fortunately, all hope is not lost! Although these new roaches are growing averse to glucose and sucrose, they are still attracted to fructose (fruit sugar) and maltose (found in beer). This means that if your sugar traps are ineffective, they can be slightly altered to still trick cockroaches into falling for them.

Non Toxic Spray

Non-Toxic Spray

This non-toxic spray kills larvae, eggs, and adult insects by breaking down their exoskeleton. It is safe to spray around the home and works only on the insects. Feel good about spraying indoors around pets, plants and children.
All Natural Non Toxic Insect Killer Spray by Killer Green

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