Are you dealing with an ant problem? If you have found ants crossing your kitchen island once again, eliminating them may seem impossible.
Here are several tips that will come in handy when dealing with ants in your house:
Understand the ant colony
To get rid of your ant problem finally, you need to eliminate the ants that you cannot see. As strange as it sounds, it is also true. The queen ant lays all the eggs and does not leave her nest, making her an easy target.
She just stays in the nest while the workers move to and fro looking for food. As she eats, she continues to reproduce more ants. As much as you keep killing the worker ants, the queen will just continue reproducing more to replace them.
Watch the ant trail
As silly as it might sound, you need to watch the ants as they enter your home. This allows you to see where they are coming from and going. Once an ant seeks food, it goes back to the nest with it, leaving behind a scent trail.
This trail helps the other ants to gather the food and take it back to the nest.
Do not spray them
The ants that you see are usually workers and their job is to look for food and take it back to the queen and young ants, which are being groomed to be the next workers. For this reason, the young ants are the key to the next colony. If you kill the current workers, the colony will just send out more and you will not find the queen.
Set some bait
Instead of getting rid of the worker ants, you should use them to eliminate the queen. Use food that is poisoned as bait. Once they carry it back to the nest, they will feed it to the queen and kill her, eliminating all future colonies.
Do not clean yet
Even if it may seem like a good idea to clean the foo
d trail as soon as you set the bait, you need to resist the urge. You do not want to get rid of the odor trail, which will lead the worker ants to the bait. If they carry your bait instead of any other food, your plan is halfway complete.
Patience
The worker ants will now carry the bait with insecticide back to the nest. You need to be patient because the bait might take several days or weeks to kill the entire colony. This is especially true if a colony has several queens.
If they empty the bait station completely, you might need to replace the bait.
When to spray
If the ants lead you to a belowground nest outside, it is time to spray. Instead of waiting for the bait to kill them, you can drench the nest with an insecticide to kill the ants quickly and efficiently.
Keep it clean
Once you get rid of all the ants, it is time to clean your house thoroughly to prevent re-infestation. Ants usually leave their nests in search of food and water. You should not make it easy for them to find it: keep your surfaces clean and seal your food.
Are you thinking about hiring pest control New Jersey based experts? This would be a good idea if you do not have enough time to spare. Looking for the queen is a time-consuming process that requires you to have a lot of free time.
Have you just gotten rid of your ant problem? You need to remember that cleanliness will keep them at bay.