In Germany, too, a cockroach infestation is much more of a daily annoyance than most people suspect. Because even the cleanest households are not immune to the residents having “cockroaches dancing around on their heads”. The only important thing is that you take care of the unwanted newcomer quickly and in the right way. How to get rid of different types of cockroaches or cockroaches.
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cockroaches? In Germany?
If we are presented with magnificent black-brown and multi-legged crawling animals in films, aren’t they in areas where it is significantly warmer than here, and in any case more of a dramaturgical device intended to indicate dubious cleanliness?
Well – it’s not quite like that, a cockroach also has a German name, and it’s quite simply “common cockroach”. This common cockroach actually has the botanical name “Blatta orientalis”, which indicates an origin from warm regions. However, if this actual, “real” cockroach is also known in German as a baker’s cockroach or Oriental cockroach, this in turn indicates that it was imported to Germany at a time when exotic imported goods were still only imported by processing occupational groups. The more the international trade in goods has spread, the “real” cockroach has become a real cosmopolitan.
It shares existence as a known storage pest with a penchant for living in human dwellings with some of the other 4,600 or so species of cockroach. With the trade in goods z. B. the American cockroach, the “Periplaneta americana”, are imported. We Germans also have our very own cockroach, the German cockroach or “Blattella germanica”. All together are summarized under the term cockroaches, in the international confusion of languages then all cockroaches. All together are among the most common cockroaches found in homes.
However, if there really is a cockroach in your household, there is no reason to be ashamed. A cockroach infestation has nothing to do with a lack of cleanliness or poor hygiene. The animals are extremely willing to survive and procreative. They are usually brought in from outside (via food packaging, with holiday luggage, with the purchase of imported equipment) or migrate into the house via sewage pipes.
What cockroach is it?
The three species just mentioned could be up to mischief with you if you sight a cockroach-like animal. The identification is not unimportant for planning the fight:
1. Damage caused by German cockroaches and American cockroaches is usually limited, for the following reasons:
- The German cockroach is a fairly small cockroach, only about an inch long when fully grown.
- Therefore, the feeding damage caused by these little animals is usually very small
- The light-shy little animals often have to be content with paper or the like in our households, where few supplies are lying around
- In addition, the German cockroaches do not tolerate cold, once they have migrated into your shed, they die out over the winter.
The American cockroach, on the other hand, is an imposing animal of about 3 cm, if something like that crawls out of your fruit box, the pursuit will follow immediately.
- The American cockroach does not tolerate cold at all either, so most clutches (on merchant ships, for example) die off in winter.
- It is therefore only in very rare cases that you might get to know American cockroaches as a single animal, serious infestations in private households are not known.
The German cockroach could possibly “bread” you if you find warm and damp places with food leftovers in your kitchen. The danger is even greater if you live next to a restaurant, laundry, infirmary, pet store, or other establishment inhabited by cockroaches. Its average temperatures and climatic conditions are almost a paradise for the cockroaches.
2. A completely different caliber is the common cockroach or cockroach. This cockroach is darker than the German cockroach, slightly reddish in color, and almost twice as long. It grows up to 3 cm. While the German cockroach looks a little “see-through” and quite fragile, this cockroach is quite a noticeable beetle, with a shiny chitinous armor. They are said to be the fastest of all insects in the world. It has an unbelievable speed of one and a half meters per second.
Most importantly, these common cockroaches, or roaches, have long outgrown their southern home in that they are much more cold tolerant than the other cockroach species. Once they have “immigrated”, they can also survive in basements and sheds and spread further from there.
Fighting the German Cockroach
Whenever you notice light brown cockroaches that look a little transparent during the day, this indicates a serious infestation of these really light-shy little animals. In most cases, you will then be able to perceive an unpleasant musty smell. The German cockroaches secrete it from an abdominal gland.
Of course you should act quickly now, but please don’t panic. The German cockroach can theoretically transmit diseases, like almost every insect, but of course you can only do this if you have come into contact with dangerous germs beforehand. On average, however, a German cockroach has much less opportunity to do so in its relatively short life than an imported cockroach, which is highly resistant and migrates from the ship to the wholesale market and into the cold warehouse and survives there for a long time. The German cockroach would have died three times under these conditions, it tends to migrate from the field to the shop, but it did not get to know very many germs there. It could be different in the professions mentioned above, but here it is of course fought immediately upon sighting.
Of course, the German cockroach should still be fought, and as soon as possible. Here is a kind of “shortcut”: there will be a time when you are anything but certain that there are any little animals in your kitchen in unusual numbers. If you don’t do anything during this time, it will become unusual amounts. So, at the first sign, you should immediately purchase a detector from a knowledgeable professional. Sas is a sticky trap equipped with a species-specific attractant.
Then, when you know you need to fight German cockroaches, you can do it specifically. First of all, baits with stomach poisons are laid out for these pests. These bait boxes with the attractants should be in place for at least three months. This is the only way to ensure that all young animals are also destroyed. In the meantime, unfortunately, you would have to go through all the corners that are suitable as “roach hiding places” and clean them thoroughly. Unfortunately, this not only includes the cluttered cleaning cupboard, which is taken apart every spring and autumn cleaning anyway, but also areas behind sinks and cupboards that are actually not really accessible, right down to the gaps behind skirting boards, door frames or wall joints. The animals could have spread their eggs anywhere. if you make it
Larger dismantling work can perhaps be prevented if you also get a spray against the cockroaches. You can spray this into the inaccessible spaces. However, for reasons of health and environmental protection, you should never use this spray on large areas. Don’t forget to (cautiously) talk to your neighbors if you suspect that the cockroaches have migrated from a neighboring farm. Then you can coordinate the control measures and control them together. Because control should be. This is the only way you can ensure that a nest has been missed and that the whole cockroach community will spread from there again.
If you are really unlucky, the rather small German cockroaches have made a nest in a crack in the brickwork or the floor. These cracks would then have to be closed.
Fighting cockroaches
As I said, the common cockroach or cockroach is not an unknown animal in our country, on the contrary, from the 18th century to around the 1950s, it was widespread in all European cities as a well-known hygiene pest.
If you see something that looks like a cockroach, you should definitely take it seriously. Not only do these hygiene pests have a good chance of picking up and carrying away many germs, they also have exceptional resilience. Completely undamaged cockroaches were found after the atomic bomb tests on Bikini Atoll.
Once you have brought the cockroaches into the house in packaging material or food, or if they migrated through an old water pipe from the sewage system, the cockroaches will find ideal living conditions in our houses. Heated living rooms offer comfortable temperatures of around 20 degrees. Kitchen waste and water offer a rich supply of food in the kitchen. From there, the animals then migrate into every room in the house, as they can squeeze through the narrowest gaps. They then set about multiplying at explosive speed and by now at the latest also infest the adjoining rooms.
You are pretty much powerless against “real” cockroaches on your own. These pests are extremely stubborn and therefore really difficult to control. Once you have identified the animals, you should therefore initiate professional cockroach control by a specialist pest control company as soon as possible. This company then also checks whether entire rows of houses are infested and, if necessary, coordinates the simultaneous control so that the cockroaches disappear everywhere.
Conclusion
If there are little animals in your kitchen that can be identified as cockroaches with a high degree of probability by looking on the internet, this is neither a reason to blush in the face nor a reason to panic. All you should do is catch one of the little creatures fairly quickly and determine the exact species. Then you can immediately initiate the appropriate control measures.
