Ant Pest Extreminator

Spring is just around the corner, and warmer weather means that pests will be more active. Ants are more active in the spring, and start to search for places where they can expand their colony. They need water and food resources to be close by, and protection from freezing. 

This unfortunately means that human dwellings and offices are often appealing to ants. Ants are skilled scavengers, and they can sneak through tiny cracks to get into buildings and search for food. If there’s easy access to food in your kitchen or pantry, the ants will remember this and keep coming back for more. 

Most of the ants that we see in our spaces during the spring are looking for food to bring back to their colonies. So if they find crumbs or open containers of food in your home, they’ll tell all their friends. A couple ants can quickly turn into a full-blown infestation. Ants have a great sense of smell and are able to sense food from a big distance away. They are especially drawn to foods that are sugary and sweet, which unfortunately means that they like a lot of common human snacks. 

Once ants have found a food source, they will start transporting it back to their nest. Ants can leave a special scent trail that tells other individuals in the colony where to go to find the food source. The other ants can follow it back and forth from the nest to the food and take it back to feed the colony members. Once you have an ant problem, it can be nearly impossible to get rid of them on your own. The good news is that Independent Pest Solutions offers excellent ant control services. 

Where exactly do ants come from? 

Some of the most common types of ants in Washington state are odorous house ants, also known as sugar ants. They usually build their nests at the bases of plants and trees. People love having plants as part of their yard’s landscaping, from small flowers to big shrubs. However, these places are ideal for ants to thrive in. 

If they aren’t drawn to your home because of food, ants sometimes flee from spring rains by seeking high ground and entering homes. If you got rid of some of the plants near the ant nest, this might be a reason that they seek refuge in your walls. Lastly, they might just be outgrowing their nest and are trying to expand. They may find that your home is the ideal location to live, and won’t want to leave. 

How do I know if I have an ant problem, and how do I fix it? 

If you don’t know if you have a serious ant problem, one method to find out is to leave a can of soda on the counter and come back an hour later to see if ants have arrived. You’ll know for certain then. You may be tempted to grab a can of insecticide and start spraying away. However, this will not be effective and might even make the problem worse. Ants are great at keeping their colony safe, meaning only 1 in 10 is visible at any time. For every one ant that you kill, there are nine left that are warned of a threat. 

Pest Extreminator

When ant colonies feel like they are under attack, they double down and are even harder to get rid of. Some species of ants are polygenic, which means that their colonies have multiple queens. When they feel like the colony is under threat, each queen may take part of the colony and spread out in a different direction. If the ants are living in your house, this means that suddenly they’ve spread out to your living room, kitchen, bathroom, or even bedrooms. 

It may seem like your sugar ant problem is never-ending, if it’s been going on for years. It may seem like the ants are going away and coming back, when in fact it’s as a result of ineffective pesticides. When you use basic ant spray, it can make the ant nest fragment as they break off into multiple smaller nests. They’ll scatter themselves and then grow in numbers, which can make it seem like there’s a whole new problem in a different place, when it’s actually the same one. The ant problem isn’t going away and returning- it never went away in the first place. 

This is why it’s important to not just use over-the-counter remedies for your ant problem, and instead enlist the help of a pest control technician with experience. The treatments that we use for ant control at Independent Pest Solutions are non-repellant, residual, and with a delayed action. This means that the ants will spread it all around their colony before it starts to take effect, and they won’t be able to escape it. 

Only a small percentage of an ant nest is exposed at any given time so that the ants can forage. This is why it is important to use the right methods, so that the pesticide doesn’t take effect until a bigger portion of the nest is exposed to it. You don’t want it to take effect right away, or the colony will fragment to try and get away from the thing killing them. When you’re dealing with an ant problem, it’s smart to get professional help instead of trying to take care of it on your own. Doing it yourself can make the problem worse. 

It’s also effective to prevent ant infestations from happening in the first place. This means keeping plants trimmed back, ensuring that they don’t have access to food resources, and putting ant repellant on your home’s exterior. All of these things can keep them from coming into your home. 

Reach out to Independent Pest Solutions so that we can conduct an initial free inspection. Ant control is just one of the many services that we offer. Our pest control technicians are the best around, and have the experience needed to do an excellent job. We don’t just get rid of current infestations; we prevent them from happening again, and we also restore attic and crawlspace areas. Our local business is dedicated to helping the people of our community.