How to Get Rid of Roaches in Your Stove
It seems that cockroaches are everywhere nowadays, with their love of warm and humid environments. They search for food in your kitchen, scuttle around in the bathroom, and lurk in basements and attics. They’ve made homes of a lot of strange places, and one of them might be inside of your stove and oven!
It does meet the criteria, as it is often dark and pretty warm even when turned off. Cockroaches will take over the oven without a second thought, and that’s not a myth. The oven is also where all your food goes, so they will be able to find food crumbs and even a bit of water inside the oven and stove.
Here’s why roaches love the stove so much and what you can do to keep them out of it.
Why Do Roaches Hide In Stoves?
As stated before, it checks all the boxes; an oven is warm, food and water-filled, dark, and pretty safe for roaches. Cockroaches can also infest your microwave oven for the same reason, and they instinctively move away from the interior hot zones that heat up when the microwave or oven is turned on.
Interestingly, microwaves vibrate the water molecules inside the food to heat things, and cockroaches have very little water inside their bodies. This makes it much harder to kill them using the microwave, and it’s also the reason they can survive ovens so well.
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Why Does It Matter?
Cockroaches in the oven seem to be harmless. After all, it’s not like they are actively getting into your food at all, and what harm can they do? Well, most cockroaches carry over 30 diseases and several parasites, and these illnesses can infect both your food and your oven. It can even spread into your cookware.
Some of these diseases include dysentery, diarrhea, cholera, and typhoid fever, to name a few, and it’s better to kick them out of the oven as soon as you can.
Other Appliances Your Roaches Live In
Roaches can live in your kitchen sink, behind counter backsplashes, behind and underneath your dishwasher, and behind the refrigerator. There are heat and water in almost all of these places, so you should be wary and inspect your entire kitchen to ensure that no cockroaches are hiding out in hard-to-reach areas.
How To Get Rid Of Roaches In Stove
When dealing with roaches in your stove, the last thing you want to do is coat your oven with poisonous pesticides that can impact your food quality. Here are a few tips and strategies to safely get rid of roaches in or around your oven/stove.
Keep Your Oven Clean
You should do a deep clean of your oven and make sure to remove all food stains and stuck on crumbs. This will make sure that cockroaches don’t get a free buffet whenever they head into your oven and will discourage them from entering.
Then you need to run the cleaning cycle and sanitize the oven’s interior with heat, which causes the roaches to scatter and run away from any hidden crevices that they might be hiding inside.
Try Gel Bait
Once you have thoroughly cleaned your oven, try applying gel baits. Since those are the only food pieces inside the oven, the cockroaches will take the poisonous bait and then eat it elsewhere and die.
The cockroaches will eventually steer clear of your oven, and the bait doesn’t leave any residue inside of the oven. If you can avoid using your oven while the gel bait is deployed, that would be ideal.
Use Boric Acid
You can also apply a thin layer of boric acid powder. This acid doesn’t go into the oven but instead is sprinkled around it. Boric acid is one of the most cost-effective solutions for dealing with cockroach infestations. Some formulations of boric acid even include roach bait that lures roaches into the powder. Studies have shown that boric acid can be toxic to pets in large doses, so be sure to place it in places where a pet will not be able to reach it.
You could also use glue or other sticky traps that will catch the cockroaches as they attempt to move through the area, and then either kill them or remove them from your house once you have a bunch of them collected.
How To Keep Roaches Out of Your Stove and Appliances
Once you have removed the roaches from your stove and appliances, then you need to keep them out! The easiest way to do this is to seal all the cracks and crevices in your home and make sure that the bugs can’t get into your kitchen in the first place.
Look around the perimeter of your home and make a note of any ways they can get into your home. Then either close those holes or place traps or poison near them to catch any roaches that crawl inside.
Then, make sure to deep clean your appliances at least once a month, keep any food or trash sealed and remove it when necessary, and then make sure to remove any crumbs, so the bugs don’t come back. While it is impossible to completely bugproof your home, you can greatly reduce the number of roaches inside your kitchen and the bugs you can get into your appliances.
The cockroach is one of the most persistent pests on the planet. Once they find their way into your stove, it takes a lot of work to get them out. But, with these tips, you’ll be able to keep those pesky critters away.
If your roach infestation has reached the point that you can not handle the problem on your own, we recommend get in contact with a qualified pest control professional.
