What do you think when you see a cockroach? Yuck! OMG I need an exterminator, and I need one right NOW! 

That’s a pretty consistent response and I get quite a few enquiries for cockroaches but when you listen to the person on the phone, who’s probably rang me at 10 o’clock on a Sunday morning and definitely, positively wants someone out within the hour to carryout a treatment, these aren’t what we think they are. I’ll explain in this blog. 

 

If you ask Google or worse, you ask the resident experts on Facebook you’ll get the response that all cockroaches are harmful and no matter what, you need to call out professionals and book a treatment as soon as possible. If its Facebook that you use for information, someone will have a horror story that will certainly seal the deal. 

 

But before you reach for the phone; just about every pest control company will rush to start a treatment without any thought to the matter, lets look into the possibility that your cockroaches are completely harmless. Harmless you say, yeah. 

I typed in the following into the Google search bar “Are cockroaches harmful in the UK?”, the experts at Birmingham City Council reply = Cockroaches present one of the most significant public health risks, carrying diseases such as dysentery, gastroenteritis, diarrhoea, typhoid, poliomyelitis, and salmonella. They are most commonly found in the commercial premises in which food is produced or handled, such as restaurants and catering establishments. 

And it just gets worse the more you read, stories of cockroaches in cinemas infesting the carpets and every pest control site (including mine) talks about the pest species of cockroaches but, we all ignore the garden cockroach, and this is the insect that is becoming more widespread and on occasion, found in our homes. 

 

An American cockroach, relax, I took this photo at London Zoo. 

The last phone call that I got for cockroaches was typical in that it was on the weekend, the potential customer was quite distressed and wanted, and would pay extra for, a weekend call out. On discussing the problem, she revealed that had been found on curtains in the lounge, the bathroom and the hallway, straight away I thought that these would be garden cockroaches but without information to give her, I knew that she would phone another company, so I have put together this blog. 

 

Garden cockroaches are becoming more common, maybe warmer winters are encouraging their population growth, certainly there are species arriving from abroad and currently its thought that there are six or seven different species of garden cockroaches living across the UK – that’s something pest control companies don’t tell you! We talk about four pest species of cockroach, when in fact they maybe outnumbered by the non-pest species, that’s amazing how we missed this. 

 

Generally its thought that there are three common species of garden cockroach: the tawny cockroach, the dusky cockroach and the more blandly named, lesser cockroach. These are all ignored by our industry and that’s something quite wrong in my opinion. As insects they live outside like many other types of beetles where they eat dead plant material and scavenge on other dead or dying insects. Generally, they live on scrub land, however as our Councils change mowing patterns and have a tendency to leave roadside verges as ‘wild’ areas, this habitat is rapidly expanding. 

They don’t cause any problems other than when they infest greenhouses as they’ll breed in heated conditions and eat young shoots and leaves. 

 

From my experience the tawny cockroach is the one that causes the problem; this cockroach likes to fly at night and during the warmer months when windows are open they’ll find themselves settling inside homes across the area. I have dealt with these in Lower Earley, Ascot and fairly widespread across the Maidenhead area. 

 

Usually the pattern goes like this: you find one cockroach hanging on curtains, you’ll find another a few days later on a wall, all of these near an open window. They’ll be found in places that don’t make sense for cockroaches, on walls, in the lounge, in the hall but not the kitchen. Our pest species will just about always be found where there’s food and that’s in the kitchen. You’ll see the pests running and hiding under things like microwaves and toasters, you’ll find them inside the kitchen cupboards and not just sat randomly on the curtains. 

 

Cockroach treatments can be expensive because of the cost of pesticides used in their control and the fact that most companies will want to do multiple visits to assess and thereby control the infestation. In the industry we only learn about the pest species so anyone getting called out to a “cockroach job” will assume that it’s a pest and act accordingly, use this information and follow the links if you discover a cockroach as it may save you hundreds of pounds.