I have a second house with zero food stuffs in it currently.
But yet ever time I visit to do work, I find roaches all over the place.
Why are they coming in to the house when there is no food to be found???
Love your website by the way. Also had a chance to visit your store last week. Great service, great help. Thanks!
There are several reasons why this happens. First, roaches don’t do much except look for food and nest sites. When food is scarce, they are forced to forage more than they’d like. I suspect this is happening at your second house. When food is plentiful, roaches are able to get their fill when they feel most secure and will spend more time hiding out of sight. But if the local food supply is limited, they’ll have to come out more and forage more so in the end, there is a greater chance of them being seen. Clearly this is happening at your location.
Second, as explained in our GERMAN ROACH CONTROL article, roaches can live 6 months or longer without food. So even if you removed all there was for them to eat, you would still expect to see them foraging around for a good 6-12 months under normal conditions expected life spans.
Third, roaches are cannabilistic. They love to eat other roaches. I’m sure there are lots of dead roaches hidden behind walls and under things which are providing ample nutrition and food for the local population. These carcasses can conceiveably sustain an active roach population indefinitely.
Fourth, roaches will commonly feed on things people don’t consider to be food. These items include fabric (furniture, drapes, carpets, etc), paper products (boxes, paper plates, paper), wall paper, wall paper glue, insulation and basically most any construction component found in most homes these days.
In summary, roaches are great survivors. They’re both adaptable and persistent. They’re able to survive on material commonly found around most any house that most people don’t consider to be “food”. With this in mind, it’s no wonder they can remain active in an abandoned house indefinitely. So if you wish to get rid of them, you’ll need to do some baiting and the ROACH GEL is ideal for this type of problem. Since it’s so much more attractive to what they’ve been forced to feed on, the gel will readily be accepted and in most cases, the population will be knocked out in 3-6 weeks once it works it’s way into the bulk of the population.