Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS
Hello, and thank you for joining me. This is Ben Sell with Ben’s pest control. And this is another episode of The Ben’s Pest Control podcast. Today we’re going to talk about Australian cockroaches. Now, Australian cockroaches are one of the species that are on the slightly larger side. So what we find is that most Floridians will refer to them as the infamous Palmetto bug, which if you’ve listened any my other episodes the Palmetto bug is just a Florida term so we don’t have to tell our northern friends we have roaches. So anyways, but it is a roach. And it is most commonly identified or easily identified by the markings on the head of the roach, which to those of us in the industry, we say it refers to a bat, or it looks not refers to it looks like a bat. It’s kind of a yellowish outline around what appears to be almost like two sets of wings on the head of the roach. And now the Australian roaches extremely common Roach. It is found throughout South Florida and on the coastal areas especially going up like the west coast of Florida. They they definitely seem to prefer very humid areas and wet areas. The Australian Roach is is a roach that thrives especially in decaying vegetation. These roaches outside like to live in places like the bark of trees, and palm trees, they’ll they’ll nest in the fronds they may nest in wood piles pretty much any place especially that there is wood and moisture. In Florida for example, we have a lot of people who who put in sheds, and for some reason they’ll put in wood floors underneath the sheds that sit on the ground and over time that wood starts to decay. And in those sheds, you have wet wood you have dark and you have water. So the roaches completely loved those types of environments. And they are they are thrilled with them. It’s not to say that they don’t get another is mean you could very well possibly find them in sewer areas or places with moisture. Now this Roach in particular is very common for getting into houses especially when the temperatures get colder. They look for the warmer insides. They’re also very common to things like greenhouses, they can damage plants sometimes. But when it comes to inside the house, they prefer to be around the water pipes, sinks, toilets. Sometimes the cupboards because you know the cupboards don’t sit the floor the cupboard doesn’t sit on the floor of the house. So you have a usually a two to three inch space underneath that cabinet where it’s dark. And because it’s close to sinks, they they can thrive very well. And again, this roaches a bigger Roach, I believe some hubs having been as large as possibly up to three inches in length, most of the ones we see are normally about two inches in length. Now when it comes to the Australian Roche normally they can give birth up to about I believe 24 babies. And it can it can go through a process where they they actually deposit their egg they don’t carry it with them like a German Roach does. So the female can go into a structure and they can put an egg sack say on the side of a cabinet or on the side of a wall. Sometimes people will see them they’re usually the execs are usually about five millimeters in length almost look like a little beam with a ridge on them. And they will deposit that egg sack and then as time goes by the eggs will hatch out and the babies will be born. Now the life cycle, which takes about 40 days for them to complete. And then the nymph stage can go from six to 12 months. The the adult female can actually lay 20 to 30 eggs in her lifetime and
they can usually lasts roughly a year. The six months is about normally their whole life cycle. What we like to tell people is sanitation is always a key factor when it comes to roaches and making sure that areas are clean and dry. Houses should be sealed. They should be in our opinion treated to help prevent them from coming in. Cracks should be closed up doors should Be able to be sealed tight garage doors should be able to seal tight and just you know, keep an eye on the general maintenance of your house. Now if you think that these roaches are are something that you possibly have in your home and you need someone to come out, we do offer a free inspection. And we’ll be happy to give you our free 58 point pest surveying analysis. And if you’d like to know how to schedule that you can give us a call at 772-878-1972 or please feel free to check out our website at www dot bends pest stop is Thank you and have a great day.
