I recently moved to Virginia Beach and in the past week I have seen two very BIG roaches in my house. These big roaches are fast and at first I thought they were mice. I was finally able to smash one and that’s when I could tell it looks just like a roach but much bigger than the ones I know about. Does this mean that these things are living in my house somewhere? Just coming in from outside? I can’t deal with living in another house that has roaches so I’d really like to get some advice on how to treat.

Big roaches are almost always American Roaches. They thrive in sewer lines, crawl spaces, basements and adjacent to homes and other buildings. When populations get big enough, some will forage out into the living spaces and it sounds like this is what you have happening in your house. The good news is that american roaches don’t reproduce fast like GERMAN ROACHES. But they will readily nest in your cabinets and other living spaces if given the chance so you need to take of the problem by treating.

In our AMERICAN ROACH CONTROL ARTICLE, you will see we have a product called MAXFORCE GEL and ROACH TRAPS listed. In most cases these are the only two products you need to apply inside. Bait the area you see them active with the gel. American roaches love this stuff and will no doubt eat some and die. The Roach Traps can help monitor the problem by catching some and alerting you to where problems are still active.

Ideally you really need to figure out where they’re coming from. If you have a crawl space under the home, they could be living in there. If the house is a slab, they could be living in mulch alongside the home and from there migrating inside. With the mild winter we’re having, they’ll be extra active and moving around quite a bit. This means you should probably treat the exterior too focusing on mulch, pine straw, wood chips, gutters, shutters and any place else they might choose to nest. Spray the entire exterior with some CYPERMETHRIN and this will take care of anything outside that might come in. Do this every 1-2 months and you’ll effectively take care of most any pest control needs for the home including these big roaches.

Here are direct links to the information and products listed above:

Roach Gel: https://www.bugspraycart.com/bait/gel/maxforce-magnum-roach-gel-1-oz

Roach Traps: https://www.bugspraycart.com/traps/pheromone-and-food/roach-trap-6-pack

Cypermethrin: https://www.bugspraycart.com/insecticide/liquid/viper-cypermethrin

American Roaches: https://bugspray.com/american-roaches.html

Roach Control: http://www.germanroaches.com/roach-control