How To Get Rid Of Flying Roaches

What is nastier than cockroaches? Flying cockroaches! They are a nuisance and can carry disease and bacteria that can contaminate your food.

Kevin Sagers

Updated

March 23, 2023

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What is nastier than cockroaches? Flying cockroaches! They are a nuisance and can carry disease and bacteria that can contaminate your food.

Flying cockroaches are attracted to heat, moisture, light, and food. You can reduce these elements to prevent more cockroaches and get rid of the ones you already have with sprays, traps, and baits. You can make these out of boric acid, coffee, baking soda, or diatomaceous earth.

Although many methods can eliminate any type of cockroach, it can help to know the type of roach you are dealing with.

Table of Contents

‍Types of Cockroaches

Regardless of whether the cockroaches you have in your home, it is a good idea to identify them. This can help you find and exterminate them. It can also help you take the necessary precautions to prevent them from returning.

This chart will tell you if the species can fly and what type of environments it likes.

	Can it Fly?	Environment
American Cockroach	Yes, for short distances	Warm and dark. Cabinets, drains, attics, and basements
Wood Cockroaches	Yes, but only the males	Like trees and are attracted to lights at night
Smoky Brown Cockroach	Yes	Humid environments and the outdoors. Attracted to light
Australian Cockroach	Yes	Near water, under sinks, leaky faucets or pipes
Asian Cockroach	Yes	Shade and grass
Oriental Cockroach	No	Dark, under sinks and in cabinets
Cuban Cockroach	Yes	Trees and bushes
German Cockroach	Yes, but rarely do	Dark and humid
Baby Cockroaches	No	Depends on Species

Get Rid of Flying Roaches

There are some different methods for eliminating flying roaches, but some work better than others.

Roach Spray

As far as roach spray goes, you have a couple of different options.

Store-bought

Roach sprays that you can buy at the store work really well to kill the roaches that you spray it on. Some are even made specifically for flying insects. However, these types of sprays don’t do much to eliminate or reduce an infestation. It is good to use these types of sprays to supplement other extermination methods and to kill off any survivors.

Homemade

You can use boric acid, or even Borax, as an effective and homemade flying cockroach spray. You can mix the boric acid or borax into water and put it into a spray bottle. Add a few drops of soap to make it thicker to coat their wings, nests, and hiding places. You can also add sugar to attract the roaches to the poison.

If you know where the roaches are coming from and hiding, this is a very effective way to eliminate them. Spray it directly on roaches you see and all over the places they hide. Repeat as necessary until the infestation is eliminated.

Traps

There are some different types of traps so that you can reduce the number of cockroaches that have invaded your home. Traps may be able to completely eliminate small infestations and they significantly help with large ones.

Coffee

For this trap, you need glass jars. The larger the jar the more bait you can fit and the more room you have for the roaches to get trapped.

Fill the jars to the halfway point with water. Get small cups and fill them with ground coffee. Place them into the jars and then place the jars around your home. It is especially good to put the jars around places that you have seen roaches or think they may be hiding.

Roaches are extremely attracted to the smell of coffee and will fall into the jars when they are searching for the source of the aroma. They won't be able to escape. Not only is this method cheap, but it is also very effective and easy. Just dump out the water with the roaches into the toilet once a day.

Soda Bottle

This is a very cost-effective way to reduce the cockroaches in your home. First, cut the top fourth of the water bottle off using a knife or scissors. Take the removed piece and place it upside down into the bottom part. It should act as a funnel. Tape the two pieces together.

Now, pour water and a small amount of dish soap into this trap. Roaches will crawl into it and be unable to escape.

Natural Methods

If you want a natural way to destroy a flying cockroach infestation, there are a couple of great choices.

‘Sugar and Baking Soda

This method is simple, effective, and all natural. Just take equal parts sugar and baking soda and mix. Put this mixture into an empty pot. You can also sprinkle it around your home. The sugar will attract cockroaches and the baking soda poisons them.

To make this method effective in getting rid of an infestation, you may need to use it twice. Also, make sure to apply it wherever you see roaches and as close to their nest as you can.

Diatomaceous Earth

It is best to use diatomaceous earth with a homemade duster. Take an empty 2-liter bottle and poke holes into the cap. Fill this bottle with diatomaceous earth and squeeze to dust it through the holes.

Sprinkle it in cabinets, under sinks (as long as it stays dry), along baseboards and anywhere that the roaches will find it. You can mix some sugar into it to make it more attractive to your pests.

How to Prevent Flying Cockroaches

After getting rid of the roaches, you want to make sure you don’t attract them again. There are a few things you can do to help prevent roaches from invading your home.

Since you want to prevent the roaches from flying in, you should install screens on any windows you like to open. If you have screens that have holes in them, think about replacing them. However, even though a lot of roaches can fly, they usually still get in by walking.

The first thing you should do is seal any unnecessary entry points. This can be done with caulk or even mesh wiring placed over gaps and holes. Also, a lot of flying cockroaches like leaves and sticks so cleaning these up can reduce the chances of a roach infestation.

A lot of flying cockroaches are attracted to lights. This is especially true at night so you may want to turn lights off as much as possible. This will prevent them from coming close and having a chance to enter in the first place.

Also, cockroaches will eat almost anything so it is important to clean often. This includes wiping down countertops, taking out the garbage, and cleaning the floors. This is the best way to prevent roaches because they will not have as many reasons to enter your home in the first place.