Why Earwigs Infest Homes?

2 years ago
by Heather Whitney

Content:

When it comes to seeing these giant creepy-looking critters, you might feel a bit of a rush to protect your garden from all things earwig. While these weird-looking insects are well-known garden invaders they can dominate other areas too. Earwigs can be quite adaptable when it comes to finding their perfect living conditions.

No area is truly ever safe from an invading army of earwigs. These strange insects will happily take over your greenhouse, shed, pool, and even your home. It can be pretty irritating to deal with a mass amount of pinching bugs in your shed or pool area. It is often expected when you own a greenhouse or garden. But where can one draw the line for earwigs in the house?

These devious insects, like many other pests, don’t fully understand the notion of boundaries and how they are not exactly welcome into your home. But you may accidentally be welcoming these insects and others with your habits. Nothing like accidentally attracting a hoard of earwigs to make you question your home’s defenses.

It is too often assumed that only people who poorly maintain their home or live in a pigsty have pest problems. This is simply not true on many levels. An insect will seek refuge in some of the most spotless of homes, just ask any restaurant owner or someone who runs a clean business. Insects will go where ever they can have their basic living conditions and needs met.

But don’t worry, the earwig isn’t the worst pest to deal with and can be fairly helpful on some level. Earwigs serve mother nature dutifully in their own special way. They are food for many different creatures and partake in the breakdown of decaying vegetation.

While earwigs aren’t useful in the home, they can be useful to anyone who owns chickens or wants to keep pesky aphids off of their plants. With this guide, you will be able to figure out what attracts earwigs into people’s homes, how to get rid of them, what their offspring look like, and other important earwig information.

Don’t settle with earwigs in your home when you can easily rid yourself of these pesky pincher bugs. All you need is this handy earwig guide, a little elbow grease, patience, and consistency in using earwig prevention methods.

Earwigs Infest

Nothing like turning on the light just to see a creepy-looking insect with giant pincers crawling all around your bathroom floor at three in the morning. Don’t worry, it isn’t a new species of a mutant cockroach! What you are actually seeing is a strange little insect called the earwig. While they may make you feel a bit unnerved, they don’t mean you any real harm.

Contrary to the old wives’ tale, earwigs don’t actually want to eat your brain and they rarely ever want to live in someone’s ear. The reason the legend came about was simply a matter of wrong time, wrong place for an adventurous earwig. Earwigs will only enter your ear if your bedroom is a suitable hiding spot for them.

Typically, most people’s bedrooms are the exact opposite of optimal living conditions for an earwig. Earwigs in the home will usually hang out around your leaky attic, damp dark basement, kitchen plumbing, and in the depths of your bathroom. Baseboards, broken flooring, outside decks, patios, and humid garages are also housing options for an earwig.

But the biggest deal with earwigs in the home, is they don’t even want to be there themselves. Earwigs prefer the great outdoors and rather make their home in your yard or garden over scavenging around your home. So what attracts earwigs into people’s homes in the first place if they really don’t want to be there?

Earwigs will live indoors for a few reasons. You provide a reliable food source for them, they sneak into your home through cracks or crevices, they tag along with things you bring inside or the weather drives them to take cover fast for survival.

When the Weather is Frightful, Your Home Looks Very Delightful

open attic

Figuring out what attracts earwigs can make you feel irritated. Sometimes it isn’t really your fault and is really mother nature’s fault.

Like many other insect species, the earwig is temperature-sensitive. In nature, they would either die off or try to burrow deeply into the ground and wait out the winter.

But this little creepy crawlies are pretty opportunistic when it comes to looking for other ways to escape nature’s fury. An earwig will sneak into your home when the weather is either too cold or too dry.

Earwigs rely on warm temperatures to rear their young and survive. They also need humid conditions, anything else simply won’t do for an earwig.

Sometimes all it takes to drive earwigs into your home is a really wet rainy season. While an earwig does love living in damp conditions, it can’t really survive in a flood of water either. Earwigs prefer a nice happy medium when it comes to picking their living quarters.

Poor maintenance and cleaning can attract earwigs into the home since leaf-filled basements, damp attics, and a wide-open humid garage is all perfect pseudo-homes for an earwig too.

How Earwigs Break into Homes, Sheds, and Greenhouses

This is where you will need to put most of your focus when dealing with earwigs. The best way to give earwigs the boot is by not inviting them into your home in the first place. Many pests often find their way into homes by taking advantage of any structural weaknesses such as cracks, crevices, open windows, open doors, holes in the attic or walls of your home, and so on.

Proper home maintenance is the greatest prevention method against any pest. All you need to do is check around your doors, windows, attic, basement, walls that are a part of the exterior walls of your home, cracks or crevices in your baseboards, creaky floorboards, and so on.

Before you bring anything into your home, make sure you shake it out first. Sometimes earwigs will hitch a ride on newspapers, firewood, books, lumber, infested boxes, and more.

Another thing that can attract earwigs into your home is lights. Yep, earwigs share this weird little habit with moths, they are attracted to lights at night. Switch out your outdoor light bulbs for some sodium light bulbs.

When Earwigs Infest the House

earwig in bathroom

Earwigs don’t usually live in large numbers unless you have managed to stumble upon a nest of them.

Unlike other pests, earwigs generally live solitary lives until they need to mate, this means you will most likely just see a few hanging around where they aren’t wanted. Earwigs also don’t like to live around people, so check areas in your home that get the least amount of foot traffic.

You will most likely see these insects near areas that are damp and dark or are their main food source. Check your pantry, kitchen sink, bathroom, damp and dark areas in your basement, leaky areas in your attic, floor ventilation systems, near windows and doors, and so on.

Getting to Know a Little about the Earwigs

  • What do earwig eggs look like exactly?
    Earwig eggs have a light yellowish to white color. They are round and slightly elongated. You will most likely see at least 50 – 80 eggs in total depending on the earwig species.
  • What does earwig larvae look like?
    Earwig larva is called nymphs. These little nymphs often look like tiny white versions of adult earwigs.
  • What does an earwig will eat inside a home?
    If you are growing any of their favorite foods inside your home, you will definitely attract earwigs. These pinching creepy crawlies will go for zinnias, soft skin fruits, small insects, dahlias, corn silk flowers, sunflowers, certain types of vegetables, and so on.
    There are very few things an earwig won’t eat which is why they are seen as a nuisance by farmers and organic gardeners alike. In fact, earwigs can act like cockroaches when it comes to food sources. These insects will even eat food spills, cookies, crumbs, flour, grains, and more.
    Make sure you clean up and check your pantry when dealing with an earwig infestation.
  • Are earwigs dangerous in the home?
    Earwigs don’t really pose a health risk to you or your pets. However, your favorite houseplants are another matter altogether. Earwigs will go for any vegetation source so houseplants are definitely at risk when it comes to an uninvited infestation of these bugs.
  • Can an earwig really bite you?
    An earwig doesn’t bite. What an earwig can do is pinch you with their pincers. The reason they may do this is if they feel you are either threatening them or near their young nymphs. Female earwigs are known to be extremely protective of their young nymphs so watch out for any earwig nests.
    Don’t worry an earwig’s pinch won’t kill or leave you scarred. The most you will experience from an earwig’s pinch is slight pain and some redness near the area where you were pinched. Should you experience the unfortunate event of being pinched by one of these scary looking insects, all you will need to do is wash the area with soap and water.
    Once you have done that you can apply a little disinfectant on the area and wait for the redness to go away on its own.

How to Shoo Away Earwigs From Your Home and House Plants for Good

cedar oil

If you are looking to go beyond what attracts earwigs into your home, you might want to try out one of these natural earwig remedies in your home.

Pesticides can often be very hazardous when used inside and are often not advised. Some bug sprays might work on an earwig but you will end up exposing children and pets to the poison as well.

1.) Spread diatomaceous earth in areas with earwigs

2.) Spray cedar oil or neem oil around your home

3.) Place water and dish soap in a bucket and set them near the places where you found earwigs

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