Menu
Even though earwig bugs look scary, a few of them can be good for your yard. When there are a lot of them, they can hurt your plants and get into your house. Find out when it’s important to know how to get rid of earwigs.
Earwigs are natural composters because they eat dead or rotting things. As long as bug populations stay in balance, they can help get rid of pests like aphids, maggots, and armyworms. If you want to know how to get rid of earwigs, keep in mind that they usually don’t do much damage. But you might want to do something when their numbers grow quickly, which can happen when it’s wet and warm.
Earwigs are bugs that live in our gardens and in our houses in damp, cool places. They have six legs, two eyes, and pincers, which are called cerci. This is how pincher bugs got their name. The three parts of their bodies are long and vary in color from brown to black.
There are 2,000 species in the world, and they live everywhere except the polar areas. The European earwig, which is not native to North America, is the most common pincher bug there.
Earwigs almost never fly. They hide during the day and come out to feed at night, not just in gardens but also in closets, crawl spaces, basements, and other damp, cool places. These animals eat almost anything, including fruits, leaves, slugs, snails, and other insects, as well as wet, rotting wood. They also eat flower and veggie plants that are alive, dead, or dying.
They are a bother when they get into your home through cracks, holes, or gaps. But they don’t usually do much damage, and the fact that they are there can tell you about water damage you hadn’t noticed.
Earwigs don’t bite or spread diseases, and when they pinch, it doesn’t really hurt. Overall, earwig bugs don’t do much damage to the environment or the economy, so don’t worry too much about how to get rid of them.
And that old story about how earwigs can get into your ear? It’s very unlikely.
You have to find the earwigs in your house before you can get rid of them. Use a flashlight to find pincher bugs at night when they are out and about. Check places where the air is cool and water might leak or collect, like kitchens, laundry rooms, bathrooms, basements, and around outdoor taps and air conditioning units. At night, they are often drawn to porch and patio lights, so check under outdoor chairs and flowerpots during the day.
Earwig bugs can also be smelled. When they are moved or squashed, they let out a yellowish-brown liquid with a strong, bad smell.
Go out at night with a flashlight to look for pincher bugs under and on dying plants, in fallen leaves, and under pots. Some of their best plants are marigolds, potatoes, lettuce, celery, beans, squash, and dahlias. They make holes in the leaves that look like slug or snail holes. This makes the plants look ragged. They also often leave tiny black bits when they go to the bathroom.
Look for ways to get rid of earwigs that won’t hurt the ecosystem of your yard, like one of these earwig trap ideas:
After dark, roll or crumple up a few slightly damp newspaper pages and put them around your yard. The next day, put all the papers in a bucket that’s already empty. You don’t have to open them. Fill the bucket with hot, boiling water to drown the pincher bugs.
Fill a can or other container with clean water until it is half full. Put it in the ground near the earwigs with the rim even with the ground. Put a little oil inside the can, just under the rim, or put a few drops in the water. Earwigs will crawl in and die.
Place 12-inch pieces of yard hose or bamboo between your plants to catch earwig bugs. Every morning, pick up the earwigs that have gotten stuck between the pieces and put them in a bowl of soapy water.
Put olive oil and soy sauce in a small jar and put it where earwigs can smell it. The pincher bugs will get in and can’t get out because the oil is too thick.
If earwigs are bothering your plants and the weather is dry, pull back any mulch around them and put diatomaceous earth around them. This finely ground dust scratches their soft bodies and kills them by making them lose water. If you breathe it in, it can hurt you, so follow all of the advice on the label.
Spray places where earwigs like to hang out with a mixture of dishwashing liquid and water.
Spraying them with a mixture of 70% rubbing alcohol and water in equal parts will kill them on the spot. Note: Spray just one leaf of a plant before spraying the whole plant, and wait 24 hours to be sure it won’t hurt the plant.
You can buy boric acid at hardware shops and put it in places where you’ve seen earwigs. It can hurt small children, pets, and other animals, so don’t use it near them.
Use a chemical that says it will kill earwigs. Be safe and follow all the instructions on the label, which may tell you to only use these items outside.
Birds and toads eat earwigs, so invite them to your yard.
Pick up pincher bugs and their eggs with a vacuum.
Earwigs aren’t pretty, and they can eat your plants and get into your house. Find out how to get them to leave.
Even though earwig bugs look scary, a few of them can be good for your yard. When there are a lot of them, they can hurt your plants and get into your house. Find out when it’s important to know how to get rid of earwigs.
Earwigs are natural composters because they eat dead or rotting things. As long as bug populations stay in balance, they can help get rid of pests like aphids, maggots, and armyworms.
If you want to know how to get rid of earwigs, keep in mind that they usually don’t do much damage. But you might want to do something when their numbers grow quickly, which can happen when it’s wet and warm.
Earwigs only come out at night to eat. During the day, they hide in cool, damp places and sleep. Damage from earwigs looks like damage from caterpillars and slugs, so check your plants after dark to see if any earwigs are feeding on them.
Earwigs are different from other bugs in that the female takes care of her eggs and young and protects them with her pincers. Adult earwigs that stay alive over the winter lay groups of round, white eggs in the soil in late winter. In the spring, the eggs hatch into larvae that look like adult earwigs. Adults spend the winter in soil as well as under yard waste, stones, and boards.
If you see a lot of earwigs in your yard or have had problems with them in the past, you can just sprinkle a 2-inch-wide circle of diatomaceous earth around beds or the base of plants where earwigs tend to go. If it rains, you’ll need to do this again.
You can also use the helpful nematode Steinernema carpocapsae, which can be used instead of insecticides.
Clean up any garden waste and mulch, especially near the base of your home. Earwigs hide in damp places during the day, which can lead to them getting into your home. Instead, you can put dry rocks around your house as mulch.
Lights also draw earwigs, so turn off or turn down the lights around the foundation.
The tachinid fly is the only bug in North America that can eat an earwig. Planting alyssum, calendula, dill, and fennel in your yard will help bring this fly there and keep it there.
Earwigs don’t eat blood or bite in the usual way, but if you pick one up, it may pinch back as a defense.
From the time they hatch, earwigs live for about a year. In the fall, the males and females get together to mate. At that time, you can find them living together under rocks, in cracks, or in the dirt. In late winter or early spring, eggs are laid.
After about seven days, the eggs turn into nymphs, which are smaller versions of the adults. The nymphs gradually turn into adults through a series of molts. In the fall, the adults will mate. Most of the time, the previous generation dies out while the nymphs grow into adults.
Garden earwigs may have two generations a year in places that are warm. Most earwigs die when it gets cold, so not many mating pairs make it through the winter to have babies. So, this is not an insect that is usually found in large numbers in cooler areas.
Earwigs don’t carry disease, but even if they did, they wouldn’t be much of a problem because they rarely bite and don’t spread pathogens to foods that people eat. They can, however, spread fungal or bacterial plant diseases around the garden, though this is much more likely to happen with other insects that eat mostly living plants.
There are many kinds of Forficula that go by the name “earwig,” and some of them are pretty common pantry pests. But the common (or European) earwig (F. auricularia) is almost always found outside and only rarely comes inside.
Most of the time, you’ll find them inside in dark, damp places like under piles of newspapers or cardboard boxes. They might also get there on seedlings in pots that spend the summer outside.
But the common earwig doesn’t go inside on purpose to eat or stay for the winter. If you see a lot of these bugs inside, they are probably a different kind of earwig that looks identical.
The popular name comes from the Greek words are, which means “ear,” and wicga, which means “beetle.” There are different ideas about where this name came from. Some entomologists think it comes from the fact that when the back wings are spread out, they look like a person’s ear.
Most people agree that it comes from an old wives’ tale about earwigs entering the brain through the ear canal to lay eggs. This story has inspired a number of horror and sci-fi movie plots.
This may have been more of a cautionary tale meant to get kids to take better care of themselves, since there is almost no real proof of such a thing happening, though insects do sometimes get stuck in people’s ears by accident.
Since earwigs like damp places, it’s rare that you’ll have a problem with them in your warm home. Earwigs, on the other hand, can hide in rags, boxes, lumber, books, and plants and get brought inside by accident.
