QUESTION:

A few questions on Advion Cockroach Bait. First, will roaches die by just contacting each other? And, will the roaches eat the bait after the bait gets hard and how long does it take a roach to die after eating the bait?

ANSWER:

This was a little difficult to pin down as DuPont does not seem to have a useful product guide that answers these kinds of questions. Advion has the active ingredient Indoxacarb, and this a.i. kills by either being ingested or absorbed through the cuticle as a contact insecticide. In theory, then, if the roaches simply contacted the bait with their bodies they should absorb some of the active ingredient and it could kill them. However, obviously with a bait product the primary mode of control is ingestion, and I would say that a roach that has ONLY ingested Advion bait would not have any of it on its exoskeleton, and therefore other roaches simply touching that first roach should not be affected by it.

But, roaches do eat their own feces, particularly the first instar stage of the German roach, which stays in voids and dines on the fecal matter of other roaches. If those other roaches have recently fedd on Advion there should be some of the active ingredient in their feces and the roaches that eat them would be killed. According to one resource on indoxacarb death to an insect is between 4 and 48 hours after exposure, but a "stop feeding" action goes into effect within a few hours.

Most of the gel baits today are holding up longer than early formulations, but since much of the gel is water it is bound to evaporate, and once the gel hardens it is at the least much less attractive to the roaches. The moisture in the gel is part of the attraction as they do need water. In my opinion roaches would / could still eat the bait after it hardens, but it becomes much less attractive. If you have really limited other food resources then the bait is one of the few options left, and roaches would be more likely to continue to eat it.

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