Cockroach Control in Dayton, OH

Keep Cockroaches Out of Your Dayton Home or Business

There are four types of cockroaches in the Dayton area: American cockroaches, German cockroaches, oriental cockroaches, and brown-banded cockroaches. However, the signs of cockroaches in your home that you may notice are the same for all four types, including:

• Cockroach feces – Cockroach feces look like coffee grounds or black pepper flakes on your counter or floor, wherever roaches have been traveling.
• Smear marks – Cockroaches may smear their feces by walking through them. These smears are dark and irregular and usually appear in corners where walls join or around baseboards that the cockroaches may be harboring behind.
• Musty smell – If you have a large enough cockroach infestation, you may notice that your home has a dry, musty smell. That’s the cockroaches using their pheromones to communicate with each other.
• Egg capsules – Cockroaches are unique among insects in the way they reproduce. Most insects drop their eggs off willy-nilly and forget about them. Female cockroaches mate once and can then produce up to five egg capsules in their lifetime, with 30 to 50 eggs in each capsule. They then attach the egg capsule to their bellies and carry it around with them until a few days before the eggs will hatch. The capsules are brown and segmented and range from ¼ to ½ inch in length, depending on the species.
• Shed exoskeletons – From the time they’re born to the time they reach adulthood, cockroaches molt 5 to 14 times, depending on the species. They leave their yellow-tan shed behind.
• Nymphs – Nymphs are baby cockroaches. Depending on where in their life cycle they are, they range from ⅛ to ½ inch long but otherwise resemble adult cockroaches.
• Full-grown cockroaches – American cockroaches are the biggest of the four species. They grow up to 2 ½ inches long. They’re brown with leathery wings that they can use to fly or for gliding from a higher elevation to a lower one, with six legs and two antennae. They have two circles on their heads that touch to form a figure eight.

Oriental cockroaches are smaller, only growing to about 1 inch long. They’re black and shiny, with six legs and two antennae. Males have wings but can’t fly, while females have no wings. Oriental cockroaches resemble beetles.

Brown-banded cockroaches are smaller yet, growing to about ½ inch long. They’re dark brown and have two tan bands going across their wings. Males have wings that extend past their bodies which allow them to fly. Females have smaller wings and can’t fly.

German cockroaches are the smallest of them all, also only reaching ½ inch long as adults. They’re brown with parallel black lines on their backs. They’re also the most common type of cockroach in the Dayton area.

If you see any of these signs, especially the actual bugs themselves, you need to know how to get rid of cockroaches at home. The best way to do that is to call Fleenor’s EcoPro Termite & Pest.