Hi Dawn , i have borax powder how do we apply it ?
Many thanks
Mark and Kate Fitzmaurice
For controlling roaches? I use it for ants too, hence the question. 
For roaches, I sprinkle it liberally around edges of walls of the house etc. Roaches like to run along walls for safety. If they run through the borax, they take it home with them, and eventually the nest will die.
Do not put it inside the hive, it will kill bees if they try to remove it.
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Hello,
Few months ago there are so many cockroaches are roaming in my house then one of my friends suggest me to use boric acid to get rid of them. Then I have used the boric acid and what i have found is that it is highly toxic to roaches. Get the food-grade version of diatomaceous earth and sprinkle a layer of it near roach-infested areas. The powder will stick to the roaches and kill them by piercing the insect’s exoskeleton.
Thanks for bringing this topic to life again. I recently started catching them alive again after a long break. Their numbers dropped right down. I guess they hibernated during winter. Now the numbers are really building up. All I do is place 2 saucepans containing slumgum in my honey room with the lids nearby. Before I go to bed, I duck out, then put the lids on. The butcher birds are enjoying them again. Last night there was around 30 in one saucepan, about 5 in the other.
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This is one of our regular Pied Butcher Bird visitors, about to eat one of the cockroaches.
He’s looking a bit scruffy at the moment because he’s changing color. The juvenile grey/brown feathers are being replaced by the adult black ones.
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Probably a better option than an Abrams tank but either way it will make a mess of the hive.
Sounds like your hive is light on in bee numbers to control the cockroaches if they are a problem.
Cheers
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Cockroaches are very nasty and creepy you have to do some good precautions to save your beehives.
Yes I’d like to revive this topic, so I can share my latest cockroach strategy. The cockroaches built up in my honey room again. So 4 weeks ago I started catching them again with the saucepan & slumgum trick.
The birds are not hanging around at the moment, so I let them build up in the freezer. When I’m done catching them, I’ll put them in the worm farm. For the first 3 weeks, counting all the small ones, I got 1,115, for about 800g. I’m still counting, & the bag is now at 1.15 kg. I caught 91 last night… HOWEVER my catching strategy has changed after googling food to attract cockroaches.
If you mix peanut butter, cheese & sugar into a paste, you can place that in a glass jar with the inside of the jar smeared with oil (cooking spray), then leave it over night next to somewhere they can climb. I was leaving that out over night to find about a dozen cockies the next morning. I’m also using the mixture, with the addition of honey in the saucepans before I go to bed. I pop them in the freezer.
The other day I tried something new. Instead of putting the mixture in the bottom of the jar, I decided to also put it all the way around the inside of the top of the jar. That worked a treat. Now that jar is catching 40-60 in a night. A lot of those numbers are tiny ones, which are important to catch, I guess.
In summary: I think the peanut butter mix works better than slumgum, on account that the slumgum loses it’s smell after a short period of time.
PS Despite a fresh mixture in the saucepan, I only caught 1 large & a few small ones before going to bed. So I replaced it with the jar. I’ll freeze before counting them. I’m hooked on the glass jar as a means of getting rid of cockroaches.
PPS, it’s hard to see in the photo, a tally of 54, with a lot of small ones on the bottom. Wilma offered 2 more large jars, so therefore I’ll ditch the saucepans & use all glass jars, they will catch all night, while trialing different attractants. Apparently coffee is also an attractant. You could make a mixture of flour, milk & coffee in one jar, and good old fresh slumgum in the other one.
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In reply (5 weeks later), my bag in the freezer is now full, with 1.5 kilos of cockroaches. Would you believe that I’m still catching them, with about 20 last night, this was after a rest for a few days. I’m now targeting the back verandah (12), as well as the honey room (8)
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Out of the freezer, into the worm farm, where I’m sure the compost worms, as well as currently a lot of Black Soldier Fly larvae will make quick work of them.
