Centipedes & Millipedes
Millipedes are red, brown, black or coppery coloured with wormlike segments each having at least 2 pairs of legs for each segment. (not to be confused with centipedes that have only one pair of legs per segment).
Millipede(left)-Florida Agriculture, A group of millipedes (right)-J. Kalisch, UNL
Centipede (left)-University of Nebraska, Centipedes (right)-Techcom
Description
They are about 1.5cm long and are usually found coiled up like a spring when disturbed. Centipedes are a little longer. There are over 6,000 species found worldwide.
Desert Milipede in Arizona(left)-Young Entomologists Society, Red millipede (right)-William W. Bushing
Habitat and Lifecycle
Both are found everywhere throughout North America and many other countries. They tend to favour damp areas and in moist crevices. If millipedes are found in your house don’t worry too much as they do NO damage and they will die as they have nowhere to reproduce. If centipedes are found in you house, they can live up to 5 years. Both overwinter in the soil and emerge in the spring and their eggs are a little bit sticky and are laid in small clusters in the soil.
Millipede (left)-University of Delaware , Milliped group (right)-UC Riverside
Diet and Damage
Most species of millipedes feed on organic materials and other rotting garden debris. Millipedes are not often a pest but they have been know to eat beans, cabbage, carrots, corn, potatoes, strawberries and turnips. They sever seedlings, eat roots and burrow into fruits. There are some millipedes that are predators of other soil insects. If they are not attacking your plants I would just leave them as they work wonders in your compost breaking down organic material. I would suggest moving them into your compost pile rather than kill them. I have found no indications that centipedes cause plant damage. Millipedes have been known to eat small bugs, cockroaches, flies and a few other bugs in your house. My advice…..don’t kill these guys.
How To Control Centipedes & Millipedes
- Plant GuardianTM Houseplant Insecticidal Soap
Drench the soil or area where they are with insecticidal soap. My homemade recipe that is also effective: 1 or 2 tablespoons of any dish soap to one quart of water. Spray directly on the bugs. - Clean up Garden Debris
Keep your garden free of debris since this is an excellent breeding environment for them. Anywhere that is constantly moist should be controlled. - Hand Pick
This isn’t an easy task since they do most of their damage at night. dig lightly around the soil….you’ll see them if they are present. - *Here’s a true cute story about getting rid of millipedes:
One day when I was in the garden at 5 am… my elderly neighbour came running out of her house in her best curlers and house dress screaming! I thought maybe her husband was after her or some other major emergency. NO….it was an infestation of millipedes in her kitchen! Nothing bad there I told her. I went over to her house and swept them into the dust pan and dropped them in hot soapy water. I inspected around the foundation of her home outside and found that she had left all her weeds in a pile right beside her rain barrel. As soon as we cleaned up this mess, she never had another scare like that again LOL. She was truly thankful and baked me a lovely apple pie
August 20th, 2005 at 7:44 am
Can you explain about the soap spray? We have had an infestation of millipedes for 3 years. We have had professionals spray but the millipedes just keep coming into our garage and onto our porches. The spray has only been put next to our foundation, should it be extended 5-10 feet out? If the soap spray kills the millipedes immediately I would rather use that and not use pesticides.
August 20th, 2005 at 5:37 pm
You can buy a soap spray which is completely safe to humans and animals, but it does kill bugs. You can also make your own spray by mixing a few tbs of dish soap in a few cups of water…..spray them with this. Both sprays only work on contact with the bugs. You can also buy sticky traps and place around areas where they are, or you can make your own using tanglefoot sprayed on pieces of cardboard. 10 1 15 feet out would only work if the ground is moist since they can only survive in moist areas.
Regards
Cahri
September 11th, 2005 at 1:09 am
Hi we have been finding some millipedes in our basement. They seem to come in phases, maybe find about 5 or 6 one day then none for about 2 to 3 days, and so on. we are not sure how they are getting into the basement we do have a door downstairs that is attached to the garage. do you think they would be coming in here, and how do you get rid of them. We do have some grass clippings outside, could they be from there Thanks,
October 11th, 2005 at 9:39 am
Hi Cahri,
We have a huge problem with an infestation of millipedes in our rural home they are everywhere… They have stayed with us through all seasons and are impossible to get rid of I have heard they have mites growing on them, that they contain a hydrgogen cyanide gas and that they live in septic tanks as they are nice dark damp places, is this true and can they be dangerous to our well being!
Please can you post your comments on the web site and send me a copy of your comments via e-mail.
Thanks.
Cati
October 30th, 2005 at 6:27 pm
They will live anywhere damp and dark. I don’t know about the mites but to get rid of them you can spray the areas with safer’s soap, or a new product I found containing orange oil, this seems to deter them. A good old fashion hair dryer will also work.
Regards
Cahri
July 12th, 2006 at 10:54 pm
Hi Cahri,
I found your site tonight, as I’m in a panic over a total infestation of millpeds on my house! I have concrete/plaster foundation & ceder shingle siding that is painted & as I pulled in my driveway after work at midnight I saw hundreds of them all over the house! Today was very humid all day & we got a thunderstorm & long soaking rain tonight, could that be causing them to come out? I play outside with my daughter quite a bit & think I would have noticed these guys in my yard or on my house- even in small numbers- so why all of the sudden do I have so many?! And can they damage my house? Can they get under the siding? Will they die off if it gets hot & dry (it’s supposed to rain a few more days then be dry & in the 90’s for the next few days after that)? It’s almost 1:00 in the morning but I’m thinking about going outside with a bottle of 409 cleaner or “Orange Clean” to see if this soap spray method you talked about! Maybe it’s better that I kill them while they are on the house before they retreat to our mulched flower beds?
Thanks for this informative site!
Megan
November 28th, 2006 at 8:31 am
I have centipedes in my finished basement(Scutigera coleoptrata Linnaeus) We live in Minnesota and even the cold dry Minnesota air does not get rid of them. I can not stand to look at them. Our house is very clean and I was cleaning the couch the other day and a huge one ran out. YUK!!! I see one daily and bug spray does not seem to get rid of them. I am concerned using pesticides in the house. How can I get rid of these fuzzy creatures??? Why would there be one in the couch???? Help!!!
May 3rd, 2007 at 6:14 am
Hi cahri
i have an millipedes infestation there really yukky and scary. we just moved into our new home 1 month ago and they wont stop comming INTO the house…. right in the lounge on all floors, upstairs middle and downstairs..need help getting rid of them!!! please help asap
Thanks
From Prem.
May 22nd, 2007 at 8:06 am
Will the soapy water kill the milipedes, of just deter them. Is there any type of long term solution that I can spray to totally get rid of them?
June 20th, 2007 at 10:51 pm
We have seen some millipedes in out downstairs basement, it is finished and we have a bthroom/laundry room in the bathroom also…
For awhile we had a huge Laundry catch uo to do… So the laundry was in front of the shower so we always used the upstairs shower. I went downstairs to take a shower after out laundry was all gone and moved a wash rag and I huge millipede crawled out from under it…
That was the first time we saw one….
Now today we did not notice anything out of the ordinary in my mothers car before we went to the movies… We had stopped at mc donalds to get ice cream and when we were almost home I saw one crawl across my mothers dashboard… We sprayed some insecticide in the car and it crawled back across the dash board…
But I came to this site for help because however we did get it out of the car and squish it, I think the infestation may be bad if there was one in our car…
The thing is, I do not know where they would be coming from. So if you have any suggestions please email me!!! These thinsg are really scary to see… Makes you feel like you have one crawling on you after you see there long bodies and really long appendages!
June 20th, 2007 at 10:53 pm
Ok excuse me, now that I look at the pic above… They are centipedes…. With the really long and scaggely legs!!! EW!
July 21st, 2007 at 9:17 pm
We have been invaded by centipede bugs. We have sprayed and dusted with insecticides everywhere. Also put out granules. Now we get up every moring to hundreds of dead and few live ones. This has been going on for weeks. We have lived here 13 years and hardly seen any till now. What is thier life span, where do they lay their eggs? HELP!
August 3rd, 2007 at 9:32 pm
Hello-
I read your story and would like to know what you used to get so many dead centipeds. I have rental property and rent to a friend who says shes been seeing alot lately. I would really appreciate it!
Thanks alot-
Vicki Atwater
August 3rd, 2007 at 10:25 pm
A broom and dustpan and removing moisture from problem areas
Regards Cahri
September 3rd, 2007 at 8:59 pm
We have had millipedes invade our walkway and our basement and main living room in the spring and fall….. i will be trying the homemade control recipe…hopefully this will work, otherwise i will be trying the chemical version.
Anyone tried the homemade recipe with any good luck?
LT
October 8th, 2007 at 9:29 am
I am being terrorized by these millepedes, if anyone knows how to get rid of them all in one hit and deter them from coming back i would love to know,
they are invading my house:(
October 17th, 2007 at 9:30 am
We too have found a serious number of these little pests in our home, expecially in out bedroom and they don’t make for good bedfellows! I am talking about milipedes! Yes, we have them everywhere! My wife tells me, either they go or I go! What can I do? I have checked around the house for old debree, however I have found nothing! Where are they coming from and better yet, who invited them? Help save my marriage! Merle in WA.
March 16th, 2008 at 11:34 am
Hey Cahri, my house is infested with millipedes inside and out! In my living room, bedroom, kitchen, bathroom and the patio floor is literly covered with them. Can you tell me how to get rid of them because its extremly embarassing, i’m afraid to have guests over.
thanks
April 1st, 2008 at 11:54 pm
I have been finding millipedes in our front room and basement. We have lived in our house for 2 1/2 years we started seeing them last fall. I thought the dog was bringing them in or they were coming in on fire wood. But now that they are being seen in the basement I’m not sure. I just want them gone.
April 2nd, 2008 at 8:28 pm
i was sweeping up the mess under my pot plants and i found almost 20 millipedes!!!!!!!!!!!! how do i get rid of them with a natural remedy that will not harm my cat?? [as my cat chews on some of the plants]
May 11th, 2008 at 9:59 pm
We have lived in our house for almost 8 years. Just a few months ago, hundreds (thousands??!!) of millepedes come out at night & crawl up the stucco on the walls. I can capture 125+ in an evening without much effort. Why now? Where do they come from? Why are they crawling up our walls? Just glad I don’t have that many centipedes!!!
lee
July 23rd, 2008 at 7:41 am
We have been infested with hundreds of millipedes on a daily basis for a few weeks now, and they are driving me mad!! I would really love to know how to get rid of them permantly! They are all over my house, porch, basement, and now are in the rooms of my house!! They are so disgusting. PLEASE HELP!!
July 23rd, 2008 at 8:41 pm
I collect them with a broom, a piece of plastic & a big gulp cup. You can usually come underneath them with the cup when they are crawling up the walls. When I get enough, I go down to the lake & feed them to the fish. 3000+ & counting. Not nearly as plentiful as they were at first but it has become a daily chore to deal with them.
lee
July 31st, 2008 at 2:10 am
That was a blunt wrap up on the millipede convo
August 4th, 2008 at 8:01 pm
They are now appearing on the outside & inside walls & crawling across the carpet on the 3rd floor (30′ in the air!!!!)! I don’t see how they are getting in on the 3rd floor unless they are dropping on my bathrobe from the doorframe when I go out in the morning to get the newspaper. We are closing in on 4000 individual pieces of fish food!
lee
September 16th, 2008 at 3:15 pm
I just moved in to a beautiful house. I am upset to find that i get up in the morning to wakr my son up in his finished room in the basement to find at least 20 milipedes each morning on the carpet. They crawl on the walls too. Please please tellme how to get rid of these gross pests!
September 27th, 2008 at 10:07 am
I have centipedes in my house. I dont mind as I am told they can beneficial as they feed on any insect that might damage my property. However, I have two new tropical palm-like plants that have recently been infected with MILLIPEDES. there are more milli be pedes than soil in their pots. Is there a way I can get rid of them before they infect the rest of my plants without damaging my plants?
October 4th, 2008 at 7:16 am
I have millipede problem also,how do I get rid of them?
October 10th, 2008 at 1:11 pm
I have centipeds all over my bathroom and bedroom. My son is freaking out! How do I kill them? What sprays work the best? Also I have 3 small dogs low to the ground and do not want to harm them with any toxic sprays.
October 14th, 2008 at 11:00 pm
I have thousands of Millepeds around the outside of my house. Around the garage there are so many that it freaks me out. They are everywhere and I don’t like people to come to the house and see them. I try and kill them, but they seem to double every day. Do they die in the winter and when should I look for them after winter. If I can catch them earily enough will I be able to get rid of them. We just moved here less than a year ago and I am really creaped out over it.
Lynn
October 30th, 2008 at 8:16 am
Over the last five weeks I have found three millipedes in my house. I have never seen any outside in the garden although I work in the soil all summer. We have been in this house almost eleven years and have never before seen even one in the house so I am very worried that this is the beginning of an infestation. We have no basement, only a crawl space, and we recently had a flooded laundry room (Main floor) which took a long time to dry up. Could the damp from this have encouraged them to come up from the crawl space? The most recent one was last night on a damp towel left on the floor by my grandson. Yuk! At first I thought I had brought one in on my gardening equipment but now that I have seen three I know that’s not it. I wish I could figure out where the little so-and- so’s are coming from!
November 29th, 2008 at 11:57 pm
Okay, where do I find the answers. I have too many centipedes and they are very creapy. I am afraid to go to bed after I see one. Is there anything natural I can do inside to prevent them, I’ll be doing dishes and they crawl right up in the sink, which means they can live in water? Can anyone answer my question? I dont want to spray or can a pest control man out, plus can’t afford one and they use just poison.
January 4th, 2009 at 10:20 am
Hello there, i have a house plant that i had outside during the summer months and after moving the plant inside i noticed hundreds of insects that appear to be very small white millipeads.I cant seem to find any images online to say for sure that they are millipeads.Im just looking for some clarification and maybe a sugestion on how i can get rid of these unsightly critter without repoting.Thanks Mark
January 4th, 2009 at 11:04 am
Hello Mark
This sounds like cottony scale. You can swab the bugs with an alcohol dipped Q tip or spray with Safer’s soap. Even if this is not what it is, this method will kill any type of bug.
Regards
Cahri
May 2nd, 2009 at 4:44 pm
If we find one in our house does that mean there are more?
Thanks
May 18th, 2009 at 11:16 pm
I live in an apartment building and have found those horrible hairy little creatures in my bathroom. I breathe a sigh of relief when all I find are spiders these little things creep me out. Our building is sprayed once a month but they still appear. What can one do in an apt building to deter them from invading??? Even if they can’t be gotten rid of – are there any dangers to having them around??
Thanks!!!!
May 22nd, 2009 at 9:35 pm
After living at my home in the woods for 6 years with no millipedes, they showed up about 2 years ago. At times I was collecting up to 200 a day & they were even finding their way into my house up to the 3rd floor!
We had a very unseasonably dry & cold winter in Central FL. Until last week, we were 16″ below normal rainfall & there were practically no millipedes.
We have had almost 6″ of rain in the past 5 days (YES!!!) but, with the rain came the millipedes in hoardes of 200 – 300 in an evening. I have a zwero tolerance to them & collect every one of them in a big gulp cup until it is full & then feed it to the fish in my pond.
I will take some video in the next few days…hopefully it could be accessed.
When they first came around, I didn’t want to touch them. Now I just grab them & put them in the cup. I don’t even mind them crawling around on my hand. They were piled up in groups last night & I think they were mating. I could scoop up 30-50 at a time in a couple spots close to the yard. They seem to be seeking higher ground, like rough stucco, like cool, shady, dry places (at least when they are having an orgy) & lay low in the cold & come out when it rains alot. They are also hallucinogenic in primates (?).
This is what I currently know about millipedeses…..
lee
July 17th, 2009 at 8:58 am
We have had an infestation of millepedes in 2007 and had a bug company
come and spray inside(finished basement) and out. It killed them for awhile but they had to come 3 times. Last year they were not as bad.
Now this year 2009 they are back in full force. They are in the soil
at the back of the house which is a walk out. We have a side hill.We never have piles of debris or anything but they come. Should we spray the basement outside area foundation with soapy water?
July 17th, 2009 at 1:17 pm
Well! Finally I found out how to get rid of the Millipedes. Someone on this site told me to mix laundry soap with water. I did this and it did not work because I had way too many. So, I took cheap laundry pounder from the cheapest store possible and poured it all around the entire outside of the house and in all the cracks. I did not add water to it. Well it worked for a while and then a couple came back so I did it again. That was in April or May. It is now the middle of July and there have been no sight of them. I am wondering if the laundry detergent dried everything out and then when it did rain and it went to soapy water, it was an added affect. yay, I am so thankfull. p.s Our driveway seemed to be breading ground for worms too and they were always all over the driveway before I did this and now there are no worms either… So Plain old laundry detergent that cost unter three dollars did the trick… Good luck to anyone else who trys this.. Lynn
July 25th, 2009 at 9:11 am
I have lived in my home for 8 years without ever seeing a millipede but this past winter I found a few under the TV entertainment center which Ill admit I rarely cleaned under it. No big deal, I vacumed them up and went on a cleaning spree to get under any piece of furniture Ive neglected to clean recently– but then— I started finding them everywhere: mostly in the laundry- clean or dirty- so I looked at that and began only hanging laundry instead of putting it in baskets or drawers- our laundry room is very damp due to an ever leaking old machine and a lack of money to get a new one and our duhidifier also quit. Then when I solved the laundry problem I started finding them ion my kids stuffed toys and even on our bedding- BARF!!!! So I massively started bleaching only to watch as the little suckers wriggles out of it and up the drywall. We have all hardwood and ceramic tile floors in our house and the bedrooms are on the 3rd floor which means these suckers are not close to dampness. We recently remodeled completely inside and added on top so it’s all new materials in our home. Now Im reading they like decaying plant matter- we have 2 enormous pine trees outside that shed enough needles to have natural compost and we use Cedar mulch in our many perrenial gardens outdoors so not sure where to go with my millipede extinction project. I think I need to find a cleaner to kill them as well as find an outdoor solution to them.
August 1st, 2009 at 11:52 pm
We live in on a 5 acre VERY wooded lot and have never had a problem with millipedes until this year. We do have leaves amongst the trees which could be the decay they are seeking. We have hundreds, if not thousands at present. I contacted a “bug” guy who assures me they will go away when things dry out here. We have had a lot of rainfall for this time of year. There are so many in our pool, my husband is constantly vacuuming to keep them from stopping up the filter. I will try the cheap laundry detergent tomorrow. Thanks for the suggestion.
September 6th, 2009 at 2:14 am
I woke up June 3 to my kitchen floor covered with millipedes.
Vacuumed up 107 the first morning. Kept two canister vacs out for
two months. Carried some in a jar to the Country Extension office.
He identified them and said they are harmless and the infestation is
due to all the rain this year (AR) wooded area. I still see a
couple a day somewhere in the house. Last night my front door area
had about 100 of them, I just sweep them away. I did put Maxi
granuales all around the house which is surrounded with large gravel, and the house is on a slab, it did not help. If you google
and read any of the University Extention web sites they advise
against killing them…….but if they venture inside they get sucked up, sorry.
October 8th, 2009 at 1:16 pm
Please bring sanity back to my home. Over the past year we have been invaded by millipedes. We have been in the home for fifteen years and this problem only started last year. The house is built on a slab and all of the planting beds are filled with river rock. HOW DO I GET RID IF THESE THINGS?
Helpless in Fort Myers,
Reg
October 8th, 2009 at 7:33 pm
Cheap powdered laundry detergent does the trick. I used it last year and did not see any until this week. So I bought some more cheap powdered laundry detergent and sprinkled it in the cracks and around the areas that I seen them. That was two days ago and they are gone again. If I have to pay five bucks for a box of powdered laundry detergent once or twice a year, I don’t care as long as they go away. Hey if I have to do it once a month I don’t care as long as they go away. I find that the det. works for about six months. So I will do it in the spring Fall and Summer and then I wont have to worry about them coming back.
October 8th, 2009 at 7:39 pm
One thing I forgot to mention as well as using the dry laundry detergent. If you have wood chips around your house, this is a millipede magnet. You should remove it and fill in any areas on the foundation that will retain water. I just removed the wood chip and then with a rake, pushed the dirt toward the foundation. It only took a few minutes and it really helped. The other thing I find is that where the millipedes are found, there is always a pile of leaves there, I kept moving the leaves but they always ended up back there. So now I look under the leaves that are against the house too.
October 23rd, 2009 at 1:19 pm
I want to know if anyone else has had success with laundry detergent. I am willing to try anything at this point. They are disgusting. We have four small grandchildren and I am terrified one of them will pick one up and put it in their mouth.One is at that stage where everything goes in her mouth!Help! We are killing them all evening. We used to watch T.V. now we take turns getting up and killing millipedes!Yuck!!
October 25th, 2009 at 12:41 am
I see that I’m not the only one having issues with these little guys. Over the past couple nights I’ve noticed centipedes starting to crawl around in our house, more predominately in the kitchen/dinning room area where our back door is at. The site of these guys excite, yet at the same time, make me shiver and want to get rid of them as soon as possible.
My only fear is my dog getting a hold of one (I.E. – trying to eat it) as he’s still a puppy and quite curious about a lot of things. Does anyone know a way to get rid of these guys safely and with out calling an exterminator?