Content:
- Earwig Removal
- What is an Earwig?
- The Lifecycle of an Earwig
- How to Deal With an Earwig Bite
- Damage That Can Be Caused By Earwigs
- How to Get Rid of Earwigs or Pincher Bugs
When it comes to dealing with an infestation of any insects in your home, yard, and garden you may often time feel helpless. While some bug infestations like cockroaches and termites are a real pain to deal with, but earwig removal is quite simple.
Many people often misjudge the earwig due to either listening to the old wives’ tales about them or looking at their scary appearance. Earwigs are just simple little garden bugs that like to congregate around their favorite moist hot spots and food sources. In fact, all 2,000 earwig species are completely harmless to humans and animals.
Unlike many other pests and insects, these little earwigs don’t even carry any diseases and they have no venom either. The only defense mechanisms an earwig has are its foul-smelling discharge and its hind pincers. Their chemical discharge only smells and tastes terrible but other than that it is completely harmless to you and any pets who unfortunately get sprayed by accident.
Earwigs are also fairly docile insects unless they are severely threatened. These little bugs are more likely to run away to the nearest dark crevice than bite. An earwig will only bite you in extreme cases such as when they are protecting their young. You are more likely to get bitten by ants, ticks, horseflies, fleas, mosquitoes, wasps, bees, and other garden pests than by an earwig.
Earwig Removal
Earwigs are one of the few insects that are both a nuisance in the garden and very helpful at the same time. Earwigs are known to feast on people’s plants, vegetables, and even fruit trees, but this is their only real drawback.
Earwigs are omnivorous and love to eat dead plant matter, dead insects, and even other garden pests such as aphids, bluebottle flies, plant lice, and other foliage-eating insects.
When it comes to your garden or orchard, these bugs love to eat:
- Zinnias
- Dahlias
- Clover
- Butterfly bush
- Sunflowers
- Hollyhock
- Hops
- Lettuce
- Cauliflower
- Celery
- Strawberries
- Blackberries
- Peaches
- Plums
- Grapes
- Bean seedlings
- Beets
- Potatoes
- Tender grass shoots and roots
- Corn silk
- Apricots
- Roses
- Mold
It is recommended that if you intend to grow these varieties of plants in your yard, you should use natural earwig repellent nearby to save your plants from damage.
If you are finding earwigs in your home, you may want to maintain your garbage, keep crumbs off of all surfaces, and clean up any spilled food.
What is an Earwig?
An earwig is a small dark-colored insect that often inhabits moist soils and vegetation in gardens, woodland, and other forested areas. They are harmless in nature but are considered to be a nuisance in gardens.
The earwig is a small flat-looking insect with pincers. Earwigs tend to come in a color range between brown and dark black. Some species have wings but cannot really fly.
Earwigs can measure between 7–50 mm or 0.28 – 1.97 inches long. Their pincers are mainly for hunting other insects, defense purposes, and keeping their wings in place.
How to Identify an Earwig
- Male earwig
The male earwig has standard black or brown coloring depending on the species of the earwig. Males have curved pincers on their hind. Earwig males can have wings. - Female earwig
They have a standard brown or black coloring depending on the species. The female will have straight pincers on her hind. Some species of earwig have wings. - Nymph (baby earwig)
These young earwigs appear white to almost clear. They look like small versions of adult earwigs.
The Lifecycle of an Earwig
The earwig has four to six molting cycles before it reaches adulthood, this process is what is referred to as metamorphosis. Adult earwigs only live for about a year. Earwigs mate around the autumn and stay together through the winter. In the springtime, when temperatures are habitable, the female will then lay eggs.
The female earwig, after two days of successfully laying a clutch of 50-80 eggs, will then drive out the male earwig. She will then protect the eggs until the nymphs reach their first or second molting stage. During this time the female will feed and tend to the young nymphs/eggs.
An earwig egg looks white or cream-colored with an oval shape. These features will change once the eggs come close to hatching. The appearance of the eggs will go from their white glossy color to brown and kidney-shaped. Eggs take approximately seven days to hatch.
Some species of earwig do give birth to live young instead of laying eggs.
How to Deal with an Earwig Bite
Before we start, here’s an infographic on the topic of earwigs going into people’s ears:
Despite their scary pincers and fairly big appearance for a garden pest, earwig bites are not dangerous in any way. Should an earwig manage to bite you the worst you will feel is a little pain at the site of the bite and some redness. This will all go away in a matter of a few days and you won’t need to consult a doctor since earwigs don’t carry any transmissible diseases.
Should you have an unfortunate experience of being bitten by an earwig, all you will need to do is wash the bitten area with soap and water. Adding disinfectant or using an antibacterial cream can help alleviate the pain and redness around the area of the bite. The same applies to animals should they get nipped by an earwig too.
An earwig’s chemical defense can definitely leave people running for the hills or at least away from the insect. The discharge is harmless and can easily be washed off. The only unpleasantness from earwig discharge is the smell and a foul taste should you or your pet accidentally ingests it.
Should you or your pet accidentally ingest an earwig or its discharge, all you will need to do is rinse your mouth or your pet’s mouth out with water.
To address the fears of earwigs crawling in the ears, yes they can do this but it is extremely rare of them to do. They do not lay eggs in your brain. The most an earwig will do is crawl inside your ear since it prefers dark, moist crevices; human ears simply give them these nice living conditions.
In the event that you should have an earwig in your ear, you can easily go to any doctor or the emergency room. Like any other odd bug in an ear case, the doctor or nurse will have it removed in no time at all. Having a bug in your ear can be a scary and painful experience so it is advised to get it removed as soon as possible. Despite the earwig’s harmless and docile nature, any bug in the ear can pose a risk of injuring the inner ear canal causing bleeding, inflammation, discharge, and pain.
If you are unable to see a medical professional, you can easily find many websites that offer simple solutions for a bug in ear removal that can be done at home. A medical professional is simply the safest method in case of complications.
Damage That Can Be Caused by Earwigs
The main type of damage that can be caused by earwigs is plant damage. Earwigs don’t cause any damage to wood and are mainly considered a nuisance due to their plant-eating habits and odors.
Earwigs are capable of destroying crops if their numbers aren’t controlled. However, having a few earwigs around your compost may be helpful.
Earwigs tend to leave cup-shaped bite marks. You will find these marking on mainly mature plants or very young seedlings. The earwig bite markings are usually about 3 – 11 mm or approximately 0.12 – 0.43 inches wide.
How to Get Rid of Earwigs or Pincher Bugs
Earwigs can live in a wide variety of places outside. They can even live within the small crevices of an artichoke plant.
When it comes to figuring how to get rid of earwigs or pincher bugs there are often many ways to go about it depending on where you find the earwigs.
In Your Home
Earwigs tend to choose the most humid rooms in the house. This means kitchens, bathrooms, spa rooms, mudrooms, basements, leaky attics, and so on are susceptible to earwigs.
Generally, earwigs will only come inside if there is substantial food left lying around or to get away from the dry winters.
To get rid of the earwigs in your home, you will need to seal all cracks and crevices in your home’s interior and exterior. Limit the number of crumbs and food spills to a minimum.
Use either cedar oil or neem oil and spray it around your home. This will ward off the earwigs since they dislike the scent of these essential oils.
To keep humidity levels down in your home, use a dehumidifier in rooms with too much humidity.
In Your Yard and Garden
The main place earwigs love to live is in your garden and yard. If you have a compost pile or woodpile make sure you check for earwigs since they consider these places as optimal living areas. Earwigs will go wherever there is enough moisture and vegetation to eat.
To get the earwig population down or completely out of your garden you can use a variety of natural earwig traps. Some methods include soap and water, damp paper materials, and then drowning the insects or using an old tuna can with vegetable oil.
