Not many ants are known to invade homes, but those that do, can be pests to homeowners. So, if you find yourself seeing a whole lot of ants in your home, you’re going to want the best and most effective ways to get rid of these pests.
Forget About the Ants You See
We know this may sound odd, but hear us out. If you spray the ants you see, that won’t stop an infestation because they’re not the real problem – they’re just the workers.
The real problem is the queen ant. The queen ant stays safely and securely in her nest, getting fed by the worker ants, and the reason why she’s the main problem is that she’s the one who keeps laying all the ant eggs.
So, getting rid of ants in your home is less about the ants that you see, and more about the ones that you don’t see. The ones that keep laying the eggs and increasing your home’s ant population.
3 Steps to Stopping an Ant Infestation
1. Follow the Worker Ant’s Trail
The worker ant has one main goal – find food and return it to the queen. This means that an ant will enter your home, find food, and return to the queen with it. They will do this in unison. So, instead of immediately stepping on or reaching for the nearest insect repellent, let the worker ants lead you to their colony and their queen – your real problem.
2. Get Some Ant Bait
Once you’ve identified the ant trail, you can then easily lay out ant bait for the worker ants at various identified points. In this way, the worker ants will enter your home, find the ant bait (which it assumes is food) and then head to the queen with it and feed the queen the ant bait.
3. Use Insecticide Spray on Their Nest
If you were able to identify the ant trail and have been led to their nest outside, now would be a good time to spray your insecticide spray. Drench the nest with it, following the proper directions, to ensure that it’s effective.
The key point here is not to spray aimlessly, as many people do. If you decide to target and spray the worker ants, the colony will just send out more workers to get the queen food. However, if you find the colony, you do have a better chance of controlling this infestation.
An Ant Problem is Not a Quick Fix
There are many different species of ants and a typical colony population will depend on the kind of ants they are. Ant colonies can be in the hundreds or thousands and if it’s a supercolony, we’re talking millions of ants.
For this reason, ant bait and some spraying will be difficult to sort out the problem. An expert ant exterminator Cambridge will help to quickly identify the nest and will be able to take the necessary and safe measures that will ensure that your home is ant-free.