Do DIY Pest Sprays Work?
DIY pest control products are cheap and easy to find at local stores and online.
While they have been extremely popular in the past, they are no longer found in every home and are moving towards extinction.
Besides health and environmental concerns attached to DIY pest control products (see is Orange Oil safe?), consumers are moving away from the instant quick-kill gratification DIY pest control products offer to products that do not kill on contact but keep bugs away for a longer period of time.
DIY pest control products are cheap and easy to find at local stores and online. While they have been extremely popular in the past, they are no longer found in every home and are moving towards extinction.
Besides health and environmental concerns attached to DIY pest control products (see are DIY pest control products safe), consumers are moving away from the instant quick-kill gratification DIY pest control products offer to products that do not kill on contact but keep bugs away for a longer period of time.
Lasting pest control is achieved only when the source of the pest infestation is properly controlled. Often the pests that you see in your home are a product of a large community of pests housed in a colony or nest somewhere nearby.
The few bugs you may see crawling along your kitchen floor or counters represent the tip of the pest infestation iceberg.
DIY pest control products are effective at producing an immediate kill of the insects you see crawling around your home. However, killing a few bugs that dared to be out in the open, will do nothing to exterminate the hundreds, if not thousands, left behind in the colonies they came from.
DIY control products are designed to come in direct contact with bugs to produce a quick-kill. Then, the product disintegrates quickly.
In part, DIY pest control products are designed this way to prevent long-term exposure and adverse health effects on people or animals.
This means that DIY pest control products would achieve control of the source colonies only in one of two scenarios:
- You successfully pursue the pests you see all the way back to their hidden creepy-crawly nests and unload all the DIY pest spray you have on the mother nest, or
- You provide an irresistible bait to lure each and every single bug out of the colony. You put a sniper-precision scope on your pest spray, and work that trigger finger until the colony has been exterminated leaving you with a reward of hundreds or thousands of trophies, making you the official Rambo of pest control.
Less toxic non-quick-kill long-residual products are designed to be picked up by those few pests out in the open, taken back to the colony, and shared with the rest of the colony creating a trojan horse type of attack on the colony (see are DIY Pest sprays safe).
Residual means the product lingers where it is applied so more bugs pick it up and share it with each other. The more bugs that pick up the product, the faster the product goes through the colony achieving control of the colony faster.
Deciding which product type and approach will work best for you depends on your desired result. DIY pest control products kill bugs on-contact but do not control the infestation source. (see Which Pest Control Treatment is Best for my Home Interior?).
While you may immediately see bugs drop dead and give you the feeling of being Rambo, you will likely find yourself having to go on attack often.
Using non-quick-kill products does not give you the immediate satisfaction of having conquered the bugs annoying you on your counter, but this approach is far more likely to keep bugs away for a more extended period, even when you are not looking for them.
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