What Smells Do Centipedes Hate
What smells do centipedes hate? When you see a centipede scurrying across your floor, it’s reasonable for you to feel panicked.
Centipedes look odd, and seeing one makes most people want to kill it. But if you squash one without thinking twice about its presence in your home, you’ll be doing yourself a disservice because they have their own set of unique benefits that’ll enrich your life.
For example, they capture and eat other insects that may otherwise disrupt your home or garden ecosystem.
So if this is something you too want to experience in your household, keep some centipedes around as an easy way to aid with bug control!
Remember though, always take care not to overdo it because more can cause problems too! If bugs are already disrupting the home (specifically ones that centipedes catch), managing them with environmental pesticides might be the solution.
What Smells Do Centipedes Hate
These creepy crawlies called centipedes tend to live inside homes, searching for food sources or shelter.
Centipedes do not like certain scents such as tea tree oil, clove oil, rosemary oil, and lavender oil.
Here are some reasons centipedes are attracted to your home:
1. Centipedes are attracted because of the weather outside
Recently, the weather outside has been unseasonably warm or cold. This often makes it hard for centipedes to endure the elements and venture inside.
Centipedes prefer dark, damp places (such as log piles) and a specific temperature range (usually between 68°F and 75°F).
Centipedes are particular about certain things when it comes to the overall comfort levels necessary for their survival.
However, those with a certain amount of pest experience will know that centipedes will only go so far from their nest searching for water and food.
In summary – if you have a centipede infestation at home or in your office, you can sometimes find them by turning off all the lights in your home at night (they like dark places).
In contrast, others might find it helpful to turn on bright lights since they will look for windows since they tend to keep an eye out for prey.
2. No prey to hunt and eat outside
Centipedes are cunning hunters during the fall and winter months that can find their way inside your home without you knowing.
As centipedes search for shelter from the elements, they are usually searching for a place to mate and lay eggs, but occasionally centipedes will leave their habitat in search of food as well.
Centipedes are known to prey on silverfish, earwigs, roaches, ants, and other small insects. Centipede activity is most often seen in bathrooms, laundries rooms, or basements where temperatures are more constant at 65-75 degrees.
Here are some ways of getting rid of centipedes in your home:
1. Eliminate Centipede’s Food Source
The first step to getting rid of centipedes is to remove things that would attract them, such as other bugs.
If you have ants, silverfish, earwigs, spiders, or roaches in your home, you must get them out before targeting the centipedes.
If other bugs are gone from your house, and a professional confirms there aren’t anymore alive inside your walls, then those little creepy-crawlies will be on their way.
It’s important to note that some centipedes might die due to starvation without anything else being done on their part.
However, if they don’t vacate promptly, it could become necessary to contact an exterminator to combat these tough insects like ants or even roaches before they escalate into another problem. Professionals are helpful when one needs help with household pests.
2. Centipedes hate the scent of the spray
The second step is to spray a mixture of cold condensed natural extract essential oil and water in your home. Centipedes hate peppermint, eucalyptus, and citrus smells and tend to avoid them like the plague.
You can prepare a spray by adding 5-7 drops of peppermint, eucalyptus, or citrus essential oils in half a gallon of water. Spray the mixture in damp and dark corners like the bathroom, basement, or garage where they hide.
Make sure you spray the mixture into the cracks and gaps around the floor and walls. Please do not overdo it, though, as that could cause them to go elsewhere!
Remember that essence oils ARE repellents but not killers – so this should be seen as a temporary fix rather than an outright permanent solution for getting rid of centipedes altogether.
Although it does help slow down their reproduction rate, there are fewer possible things for them to lay eggs on – such as damp areas such as these where food sources may potentially be located.
3. Cinnamon bark should be kept in the dark
There is another excellent centipede repellent that you can use. Cinnamon helps keep them away, and the best way to use cinnamon is to have it in spaces and corners of your basement, kitchen, bathroom, and garage.
If many centipedes are found in your kitchen area around the dishwasher, consider using cinnamon essential oil there as well.
It must be natural, though, and pure, which you can get from a professional supplier for aromatherapy or herbalists.
You can also use cinnamon powder which will work just fine, but only if you use enough of it regularly, such as sprinkling a little powder over drains and behind the garbage cans to get rid of the smell.
Typically, centipedes like areas where there are moisture problems, so near drain, bathtubs, etc., is where they congregate, so make sure that you vacuum to clean these places periodically.
Also, make sure there’s no food waste left out as this may attract insects or other pests like rodents.
What Are Centipedes?
Centipedes, or hundred-leggers, are a kind of evil creature in which each of its segments has a pair of legs. It’s interesting to note that the house centipede cannot be measured using the international standards system because they often don’t have 100 legs.
The number can fluctuate from 30 to 354, depending on their size. Centipedes vary in color from yellowish-brown to deep navy blue, and their heads are orange in color with long antennae.
Centipedes are 6 inches long and have an approximately one-year life span. Another species of centipede is the Scolopendra, which is much larger and orangey-blue compared to the house centipede’s hue appearance!
House centipedes don’t bite humans as their fangs are too small to break through human skin, but humans are far more afraid of centipedes than vice versa.
Conclusion
Centipedes are native to North America, South America, and Asia. True centipedes can live in forests and on open lands. They prefer a humid environment with lots of ground cover. However, they get into houses if food or warmth is unavailable outside. If a home is too hot or there is no good water source near the nest, a centipede may try walking into an air-conditioned room seeking help to stay hydrated.
They don’t bite but will sting if handled roughly. Their bites are painful and irritating – similar to the feeling you would experience after being stung by a giant bee! Centipedes feed on insects in homes, such as cockroaches and silverfish, making them desirable instead of other spider species that can cause harm to humans and pets residing in homes.
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