Preventing boxelders from entering your home is the single most important defense. Seal around window frames, where utilities enter the house, cracks in the foundations and under eaves. Make sure doors are weather stripped at the bottom, leaving no space. Screen off vent pipes and other roof openings with fine screen to prevent the bug’s entry.
Repair any loose siding which, like loose bark on a tree, allows the bugs to get behind the siding and against the house. Patch any cracks in plaster or stucco- sided houses.
Eliminate wood piles, landscape debris and other places boxelder bugs will gather to survive the winter.
Boxelders found in clusters on trees or the sunny side of houses can be sprayed away with a garden hose. A hard spraying is sometimes enough to convince the surviving bugs they should go somewhere else.
Hot water between 160-180˚F will kill the bugs but, at these temperatures, can also burn the sprayer. Use extreme caution if you have a source of water this hot to use and do so only outside.
Trees can be sprayed with horticultural oil early in the season as boxelder bugs begin to emerge. Cover thoroughly making sure to get under loose bark as best possible. Spray only while the tree is still dormant or in green bud stage.
Swarms found on trees and houses can be sprayed with insecticidal soap. Repeated spraying may be necessary.
Pyrethrin sprays will kill boxelders at all levels of their lifecycle. It’s a good choice for middle and late season use when the bugs may exist in various stages of its development, egg through adult.
Sometimes your best weapon when facing colonies of boxelder bugs is a shop-vac. Vacuum colonies from the sides of houses and around window sills into a bag-less, wet-dry vac canister with a quarter to half inch of soapy water in the bottom which will suffocate the bugs. If you find and can access boxelder colonies behind walls, remove them with the vacuum.
Sprinkling borax or diatomaceous earth at the bottom of window sills and around door jams will discourage their entry. Crack and crevice sprays — made from pyrethrins — will break down quickly in the environment and are also good for this use.
Because it’s the chosen habitat and breeding ground of the bug, female boxelder trees are sometimes removed to decrease the insect’s number. This seems a rather radical move and is a mostly fruitless one as well, especially in areas where boxelder trees are numerous. The insects’ eggs disperse on seed pods — the “helicopters” produced by boxelder trees — and adults will fly as far as two miles seeking new sources of food and breeding grounds. Tree removal is not recommended, unless yours is the only boxelder tree for miles around and the bugs have been a persistent problem.
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Preventing boxelders from entering your home is the single most important defense. Seal around window frames, where utilities enter the house, cracks in the foundations and under eaves. Make sure doors are weather stripped at the bottom, leaving no space. Screen off vent pipes and other roof openings with fine screen to prevent the bug’s entry.
Repair any loose siding which, like loose bark on a tree, allows the bugs to get behind the siding and against the house. Patch any cracks in plaster or stucco- sided houses.
Eliminate wood piles, landscape debris and other places boxelder bugs will gather to survive the winter.
Boxelders found in clusters on trees or the sunny side of houses can be sprayed away with a garden hose. A hard spraying is sometimes enough to convince the surviving bugs they should go somewhere else.
Hot water between 160-180˚F will kill the bugs but, at these temperatures, can also burn the sprayer. Use extreme caution if you have a source of water this hot to use and do so only outside.
Trees can be sprayed with horticultural oil early in the season as boxelder bugs begin to emerge. Cover thoroughly making sure to get under loose bark as best possible. Spray only while the tree is still dormant or in green bud stage.
Swarms found on trees and houses can be sprayed with insecticidal soap. Repeated spraying may be necessary.
Pyrethrin sprays will kill boxelders at all levels of their lifecycle. It’s a good choice for middle and late season use when the bugs may exist in various stages of its development, egg through adult.
Sometimes your best weapon when facing colonies of boxelder bugs is a shop-vac. Vacuum colonies from the sides of houses and around window sills into a bag-less, wet-dry vac canister with a quarter to half inch of soapy water in the bottom which will suffocate the bugs. If you find and can access boxelder colonies behind walls, remove them with the vacuum.
Sprinkling borax or diatomaceous earth at the bottom of window sills and around door jams will discourage their entry. Crack and crevice sprays — made from pyrethrins — will break down quickly in the environment and are also good for this use.
Because it’s the chosen habitat and breeding ground of the bug, female boxelder trees are sometimes removed to decrease the insect’s number. This seems a rather radical move and is a mostly fruitless one as well, especially in areas where boxelder trees are numerous. The insects’ eggs disperse on seed pods — the “helicopters” produced by boxelder trees — and adults will fly as far as two miles seeking new sources of food and breeding grounds. Tree removal is not recommended, unless yours is the only boxelder tree for miles around and the bugs have been a persistent problem.
where are they?
Outside and inside my house