Garden cockroaches
Posted on 18th November 2024 at 09:30
Garden cockroaches - a pest or not a pest?
What’s your immediate thought when you see a cockroach? Err yuck! OMG, I need to call an exterminator, and I need one here right NOW!
That is genuinely, a pretty consistent response that I get and quite often, but when you listen to the person on the phone and bore down into the problem, things aren’t quite what you think they are. Not all cockroaches are a pest and I’ll explain this in the blog.
If you find a cockroach in the house, today the first thing you do is probably go onto Google to search, or worse, you ask the resident experts on Facebook for advice and you’ll get the response, that all cockroaches are harmful and absolutely no matter what, you need to call out the professionals immediately. If its Facebook that you use for information, someone will have a horror story that will certainly seal the deal on you seeking an immediate response no matter the day or time.
But before you reach for the phone; a word of warning because just about every pest control company will rush to start a treatment without any thought to the matter, lets look into the possibility that your cockroaches are completely harmless. Harmless you say, yeah 100% not a problem.
I’m not knocking the industry, looking at my own website the cockroach section starts with the doom laden line “Don't let cockroaches ruin your business reputation - we service both domestic and commercial properties throughout Maidenhead, Ascot and Windsor. “
And the more you read up on them, the worse it gets, there are horror stories of cockroaches in cinemas infesting the carpets and without exception, every pest control site (including mine) talks about the pest species of cockroaches. But, we all ignore the benign garden cockroach, and this is the insect that’s becoming more widespread and on many occasions, can now be found in our homes from time to time.
Garden Cockroaches, are they friend or foe?
The latest phone call that I received for cockroaches was typical, in that it was on the weekend, the caller had discovered a cockroach in her home and was quite distressed, she wanted, and would happily pay extra for, an immediate weekend call out. On discussing the problem further, she revealed that had been found on curtains in the lounge, another in the bathroom and also in the hallway. Straight away I thought that these would be garden cockroaches but without having better information to give her, I knew that she would phone another company to come out and deal with the “problem”, so I have put together this blog on garden cockroaches.
Encountering garden cockroaches is becoming more common, it maybe due to our having warmer winters which could be encouraging population growth, and certainly like many other insects, there are species arriving from abroad and currently its thought that there are upto six or seven different species of garden cockroaches living in the UK – that’s something that pest control companies don’t tell you! Our industry talks about four pest species of pest cockroach, when in fact they maybe outnumbered by the non-pest species.
Information from The London Natural History Society on the types of garden cockroach found in the UK.
Garden cockroaches in Maidenhead
Its generally thought that there are three of the common species of garden cockroach: they are the tawny cockroach, the romantically named dusky cockroach and the more plainly named, lesser cockroach. These three are completely ignored by our industry and that’s something quite wrong in my opinion. As you’d expect from the term garden cockroach, they live outside of our homes in gardens and open land and like many other types of beetles, they eat dead plant material and scavenge on other dead or dying insects. In general, they prefer to live on grassy scrub land, and as our Councils change mowing patterns and have a growing tendency to leave roadside verges and parks as ‘wild’ areas, this habitat is rapidly expanding.
They don’t cause any real problems for gardeners other than when they infest greenhouses as they’ll breed all year long in heated conditions and they’ll eat young shoots and leaves.
From my experience it’s the tawny cockroach that causes the problem; and that’s because this cockroach likes to fly at night and during the warmer months when windows are open they’ll find themselves settling inside homes across the area. I have dealt with these cockroaches in Lower Earley, Ascot and fairly widespread across the Maidenhead area, so you can see that their definitely around.
Usually the pattern of a garden cockroach infestation goes like this: you find one cockroach hanging on the curtains, you’ll find another a few days later on a wall, all of these will be near an open window. You’ll find them in places that don’t make sense for the cockroach pests, they’ll be on walls, in the lounge, in the hall but not the kitchen. Our pest species will just about always be found where there’s food and that’s in the kitchen. You’ll see the pests running and hiding under things like microwaves, food caddies and toasters, you’ll find them hiding inside kitchen cupboards and not just sat randomly on the curtains in the lounge.
More information from the Wild Gardening Forum on garden cockroaches
A proper cockroach treatment can be expensive because of the cost of pesticides used in their control and the fact that most companies will want to do multiple visits at the premises to assess and control the infestation. In the pest control industry we only learn about the pest species so anyone getting called out to a “cockroach job” will assume that it’s a pest and act accordingly, if you find yourself with a random light brown cockroach sat somewhere in your home, use this information and follow the links to see if all you’ve got is a lost garden cockroach as it may save you hundreds of pounds.
Tagged as: cockroaches, Insects
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