QUESTION:
What is the best chemical for German cockroach control for restaurants and apartments?
ANSWER:
I still stress a couple of things when it comes to cockroach control. First is that it is unwise to put all your faith in a single product, and using a variety of formulations for roach control (bait, dust, aerosols, liquid sprays) is going to give you more effectiveness than any one of them by itself. Second is that IPM and sanitation are extremely important for roach control, so you need to perform a Sanitation Inspection of any new account before you apply the first drop of material, write your findings down on an inspection report form and share this information with the customer. On this form you now have itemized what you have discovered in the way of conducive conditions – those conditions that are encouraging these roaches to live in this account in the first place. You also can now assign a Honey Do list of what must be corrected and who is to be responsible for that action.
If there are serious sanitation issues it really won’t matter what pesticide or how much of it you use, as the roaches are either going to ignore it or the active ingredient will become unavailable for them. Pesticides cannot overcome bad sanitation. I realize that you are going to run into tenants in apartments or managers of restaurants who don’t want to listen to this story, and just want you to “spray something” to get rid of the roaches. If you encounter this you need to help them understand the limitations and the fact that they are not likely to get rid of all the roaches. You may reduce the numbers a bit, but lousy sanitation will keep some of them around. Inspect, document, clean, exclude, etc., and THEN apply insecticides as needed.
Baits are highly effective products for German roaches, but if there are plenty of other food resources in that account due to the bad sanitation the roaches will be far less likely to eat the bait. Granular baits can be puffed into wall voids and gel baits can be placed as pea-sized spots directly into crevices, which is where these roaches prefer to feed. Dusts can also be highly effective when puffed into voids that are completely enclosed. Inorganic dusts of boric acid or desiccants of silica gel or DE can last for many years in wall voids, killing new roaches that may enter them in the future.
You also have a selection to choose from when it comes to “sprays”, whether they are from aerosols or diluted with water. It is important to discuss these choices with the customer, particularly with respect to their attitudes about insecticides. Some may have a strong preference for a “natural” material, in which case products such as the Essentria product line may be preferred. if you are able to use whatever you choose then the first step is to select a product that is labeled for either of these sites, and almost all insecticides labeled for roaches will be labeled for use in both restaurants and residential settings. Be sure to carefully read the entire Label of the product you consider to know how it can be applied – crack and crevice vs. spot treatment, for example. Aerosol residuals such as Alpine or others do a good job of staying within crevices and small voids, and don’t tend to run out as water-based sprays will.
Avoid doing “baseboard” treatments for roaches. Avoid “fogging” for roaches. Neither of these gets the active ingredient to the places where the roaches are spending 80% of their time, which is tucked away within tight crevices or voids. Instead, do crack and crevice and void treatments that put the active ingredient right into the resting sites of the roaches. This not only gives you the maximum contact time between roach and A.I. but it also keeps the pesticide away from human contact and avoids getting it washed away too quickly. Really, it is far less about WHAT product you use than it is about HOW you apply it. All insecticides are going to kill these roaches if they are applied properly.
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