PL. 05 · Field guide
ANT & ROACH ELIMINATION
For the household that just watched a palmetto bug strut across the kitchen at midnight like it pays rent — or is tracking an ant line that reappears no matter how much spray gets thrown at it.
How we handle it
First, the thing we say on half our first visits: roaches aren't a housekeeping verdict. The big ones — American roaches, palmetto bugs, whatever your family calls them — live outdoors in mulch, palm boots and sewers, and they walk into spotless houses through the same gaps they walk into messy ones. It's Florida; they come with the humidity. The fix isn't shame and it isn't a fog machine. It's closing the doors they use and treating where they actually live.
Ants are a different puzzle with the same wrong answer on the shelf. Spraying an ant trail kills the dozen you can see and splits the colony — literally. Ghost ants and big-headed ants respond to repellent sprays by budding into multiple colonies, which is why the problem 'spreads' after DIY treatment. We use non-repellent baits and treatments the workers carry home, so the colony — queens included — is what dies, not just the scouts.
German roaches (the small kitchen ones) get their own protocol: gel baiting on a tight revisit schedule, insect growth regulator so the next generation never matures, and honest guidance on the two or three habitat tweaks that make your kitchen defensible. No bombs, no foggers — those chase roaches deeper into walls and leave residue on every dish you own. Most infestations are visibly collapsed within two weeks and gone within four.
Questions we hear about this one
What exactly is a palmetto bug?
It's Florida's polite name for the American cockroach — the big reddish-brown one that flies just often enough to be traumatic. They live outdoors and wander in, which is why one sighting doesn't mean infestation. Several a week means the entry points need closing, and that's fixable.
Why did the ants get worse after I sprayed them?
Repellent sprays make several Florida ant species split the colony as a survival response — one nest becomes three. Our non-repellent approach does the opposite: the workers walk through it, carry it home, and feed the colony something it can't survive.
Do I need to empty my kitchen cabinets?
For gel-bait German roach work, no — that's one of its advantages over old-school spraying. We place small bait points in hinges and corners. Skip the shelf paper project; put the afternoon toward something better.