You can also find adhesive-based traps, if you prefer to buy them. Look at home-and-garden stores, or ask your local exterminators for advice.
If you wish to outright kill the cockroaches, you can buy gel baits spiked with active ingredients that poison the insects. Bear in mind, however, that these are not always attractive to roaches, and that they may not be as effective as advertised. [3] X Research source Contact a local home-and-garden store or pest-control center. Make sure to only use a small portion of your chosen bait. If the bait spills over the edge of the tape, there will be little motivation for cockroaches to get themselves stuck. Slice the onion, fruit, or other food into a small but substantial chunk.
Try putting the trap in a high place – like the top of your kitchen cabinets, or the top of your fridge. Roaches like to scurry in high places. [4] X Research source
To release the cockroaches humanely, pick up the duct tape and take it outside. Bring it at least 100 feet from your home, then shake off the roaches and throw away the tape. If you don’t want to pick up the trap with your bare hands, wear gloves or use a dustbin. Alternately, place a box over the tape to enclose the trap, then side a piece of paper underneath to hold the roaches in place while you bring them outside. If you’re going to kill the cockroaches, you can simply throw away the duct tape with roaches attached. Make sure to close up the bag or bin once the insects are inside – otherwise they may crawl out, rendering your efforts useless!
Try pouring a bit of beer or red wine into the bottom of the jar – just enough to drown the roaches. Fruit juices, sweet sodas, and sugar water may also work well. These sweetly-scented beverages will attract the roaches, then trap them forever.
Try leaving the jar in an enclosed space, like a closet, a garage, or a stuffy corner. The cloying smell of the bait will fill the air and draw hungry cockroaches into your trap.
Set the trap again to make sure that you’ve solved your roach problem. Recharge the jar with more petroleum jelly and a new piece of bait. Repeat as needed.
If it is a dry red wine, add a quarter teaspoon of sugar and swish it around. If you don’t want to use alcohol, try some sugar and water with a bit of fruit, or just experiment. Boil the water first and let it cool to stop the concoction from going moldy before it has done its work on the cockroaches.
Alternately, use a pipe cleaner or another long-handled brushing tool to spread petroleum jelly inside the bottle, just below the neck. This will make it difficult for fallen cockroaches to gain traction when climbing back up.
The cockroaches are attracted to the sweet smell of wine or beer. They climb onto the top of the bottle, slip on the oil, fall into the bottom, and cannot get back out again. Consider making a “trail” of spilled wine up the side of the bottle. This may help lead the cockroaches into your trap with the promise of sweeter things to come.
If one bottle doesn’t solve your roach infestation, keep trying. You can set the trap with a new bottle every few days. Over time, the number of caught roaches should decline as there are fewer insects around to fall into your trap. Try pairing the wine-bottle method with the jar method and the duct-tape method. Set up different traps in different areas of your home, then observe which works best. Consider that one trap might be catching more cockroaches due to its location or its bait type – not necessarily because of its trapping mechanism.
