Although they are small, ants can be big pests when they colonize in your house. Ants normally enter your home near a water or food source –, so either typically the kitchen or bathroom. They normally travel in trails and can range anywhere from the size of a grain of rice to almost microscopic. Two of the most common types of ants you will find are odorous house ants and carpenter ants. The first step to getting rid of them is identifying them.
Identifying House Ants
Identifying Odorous House Ants
Odorous house ants love sugar and will mostly be found in the kitchen. These ants leave a trail when they travel, so just killing the ones you see won’t get rid of the problem. The rest of the colony will smell the trail and come right back to the same place. The only solution is to eliminate the entire colony. The first step to getting rid of ants is to sponge clean where you saw them walking. This will get rid of their odorous trail and prevent the rest of the population from finding them. Then locate where they entered your home and place poisonous ant bait to kill the rest when they try to enter.
Identifying Carpenter Ants
Carpenter ants are most commonly found in homes near wooded areas. They normally will live outside your house for a while before entering when they are searching for food and water. These ants will not bring the placed bait back to their nests, so placing it at the entry point will not work. Carpenter ants dig tunnels within holes, so to find their nest look for little piles of sawdust where they have entered the wood. They search for soft, moist wood that is easy to burrow into. If you can’t find the nest but know where they are entering your home, try following them back to their colony. They most natural way to get rid of these ants is to inject diatomaceous earth into their nest. It is made from decomposed algae skeletons and is not poisonous to humans, but lethal to insects. This treatment might have to be repeated more than once.
Different ants can be hard to identify and require different types of treatment. If you cannot get the ants out of your home, contact Dustin Pest Control for professional advice and treatment.