Guide
The NYC pest kit
Glue boards by the case, bait where it belongs, and the foam that ends the mouse problem for good.
4 min read · First Ave Supply, 1587 First Avenue
What a building actually keeps on hand
Almost every pest call in a New York building is one of three things, and each one has a different answer.
| Problem | First move | What to buy |
|---|---|---|
| Roaches in a kitchen or compactor room | Gel bait at the hinges and seams, glue boards to see what is left | Gel bait syringe, bait stations, glue boards |
| Mice in a hallway, basement or behind a stove | Find the hole and close it, then trap | Pest block foam, glue boards, snap or covered traps |
| Ants on a counter in spring | Liquid bait they carry home, never spray | Liquid ant bait stations |
Glue boards are the tool, not the fix
The flat cardboard glue board is the cheapest thing in this store and the most useful. It is not really a killing tool, it is a counting tool. Put four down in a compactor room on a Monday, look at them Thursday, and you know whether you have a problem, where it is, and whether last month's treatment worked.
Buy them by the case. They cost about a dollar and a half each and a building goes through them constantly. There are a few sizes, small for under a sink, the big flat ones for a corridor or a boiler room.
Bait beats spray, almost always
A can of spray kills the roaches you can see. Gel bait kills the ones you cannot, because they carry it back. Put small dots of gel at hinge lines, under the sink rim, behind the stove, where the pipe comes through the wall. Do not spray anywhere near the bait, because the spray repels them off it and you have wasted both.
Same logic for ants. A liquid ant bait station looks like nothing is happening for two days, then the trail is gone. Spraying the trail feels better and does nothing, because the nest is behind the wall.
Mice, the part people skip
Traps are the last step, not the first. Mice come in through a hole, and a mouse gets through a gap the size of a dime. Walk the baseboard behind the stove, under the sink, where the riser passes through the floor, and where the gas line enters. Fill every one with a pest block foam, the kind with a bittering agent and fiber in it that they will not chew through. Plain insulating foam is a snack.
Once the holes are shut, two or three traps along the wall, not out in the open, because mice run against walls and will not cross a room.
What to stock
A case of glue boards, one gel bait syringe, a box of bait stations, a can of pest block foam and a couple of traps. That is under a hundred dollars and it covers everything a super handles before calling an exterminator.
When to call the exterminator
Bed bugs, an infestation across multiple units, or anything a resident has already treated themselves and made worse. Those are licensed applicator jobs in New York and should not be handled out of the closet.
Sign in to your First Ave account for account pricing on case quantities. Guests see the register price, the same as at the counter on 1st Ave.
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