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Hello and thank you for joining me this has been with Ben’s pest control it’s time for another one of the Ben’s pest control podcasts. And today I’m going to do a podcast on the Florida Woods roach. Now, the Florida Woods Roach is what most people would truly call the Palmetto bug. However, in Florida what I tell people all the time is that Florida has kind of taken other species of roaches and thrown them into the term Palmetto bug, it’s, as I like to say it’s a term that we created so that we don’t have to tell our northern friends that we have roaches. Now the Florida Woods Roach is the original Palmetto bug. And it’s actually got another fascinating name. And in my opinion, it’s it’s the stink bug. And it’s not a true stink bug. There are other bugs referred to as stink bugs. But this bug has a defense mechanism where it secretes a foul scent to keep enemies away. And it also uses that scent to alert other members to flee if something is in the area. And sometimes when people step on these, they report a pungent smell around the Florida Woods roach. So let’s start with where the Florida Woods roaches found. It is completely native to southeastern United States, pretty much the entire state of Florida, some parts of southern Georgia and Mississippi and Alabama, down near the Gulf is the main distribution area. But this roach is a roach that likes to live mostly on the outside of homes. They definitely prefer to be in areas where there’s a lot of leaf debris, litter, things that they can hide in, especially things like woodpiles would be a very common one in Florida here for some reason, they like to put sheds on the ground, and not necessarily put them on a slab. So anything that you put down, that’s wood that sits on the ground that’s dark and can have moisture in it is a positive environment. There reported a lot of times around greenhouses in storage areas. We’ve also had a lot of people report that with these new planting beds that you can buy where they’re built up off the ground, as they use the compost and composting bins, or areas that they like a lot. So these are all very active areas that you’re going to tend to find them. One of the things that we find is that when people do get them inside the house, and a lot of cases they may have been brought in on something when I talk about things like firewood firewood is something that most people only bring in, in the winter months. But when they bring it in, if they’re not careful to pay attention to what’s on the firewood, they can easily bring one of these roaches in and then they will find them inside. These roaches are larger, with the average size usually being, I believe between an inch and two inches. They are dark black Roach, and they look like they have scales down their back. Their eggs are just over half an inch in length, and they like to lay their eggs in places where they think that when the babies hatch, they will hopefully survive. There have been cases where they have been found in attics. I would tend to believe that normally attics are probably more of a situation where if there’s something going on again, like a moisture problem, or if people have stored stuff in the attic that could possibly be deteriorating over time, especially with the humidity like paper or cardboard boxes. That would be an environment that would definitely serve these roaches very well. One of their main food sources is literally decomposing plant matter. And so it loves when things break down. And whether you realize it or not paper is you know, a product of trees and cardboard is a product of trees. So as it starts to break down, they would love to be in those areas. They also seem to like bark, mold, moss, things that can be found in the soil, but they prefer it when it’s a damp environment. So they are going to try to shelter in those areas to protect themselves. But as I said they do have in this case, they talk about a chemical that they store and that Chemical is the pheromone that they elicit when they are stepped on or when they feel threatened. And that chemical, it can also actually cause people to be, they can have an irritant to it. And it can bother them immensely for some people. That chemical is strong enough to seriously irritate other species of cockroaches, ants and other invertebrate predators that may want to eat the roaches, such as lizards, birds, frogs, rodents. And it does provoke them to tell their mates that, you know, if there’s something that’s in the area that’s possibly going to cause them harm that this is the time to get out of there and get away. So when you’re looking at your home in, you may have these roaches, these are not roaches that you’re going to find associated with the sewer, because your sewer system doesn’t really have a whole lot of decaying vegetation in it. So these are definitely insects that are going to be associated as we talked about with the plant material. I would imagine that they probably Thrive pretty well in areas like pine needles. We talked about the firewood, mulch beds would be ideal for them. The compost bins, the planters that are built up off the ground, as already said sheds where it’s dark underneath, so you’d have moist environment. I would tell people that if they have a wood house, and it’s got leak or rots in it, not rot sorry, if it has a rot rot in it, where water is getting into the wood, that would definitely create an environment where they would be very happy. And so these are all things that when you have this specific Roach that you have to be on the lookout for because this is definitely the environment where they’re going to want to live. Now, if you think that you may have Florida with roaches, and you’d like one of our free 58 Point inspections, please either give us a call at 772-878-1972 . And we will happily help you any way we can. Thank you and I hope you have a great day.
