With the longer days and the warmer weather, more pests are making the annual appearances this spring. Wildlife such as raccoons, squirrels and skunks have emerged from their winter hibernation and are having babies, but ants are making an unseasonably early appearance this year. These bugs aren’t just an inconvenience but can do serious damage to your home, so here’s why getting rid of ants should be a priority this spring!
Ants are actually quite amazing little insects. We’ve all heard how exceptionally strong they are, with some species being able to carry up to 50 times their body weight, but their amazing characteristics don’t stop there.
Scientists have studied ants and found that they work together as what they call a “superorganism”. Many hundreds and thousands of ants all seamlessly work together towards the same goal. Scientists don’t understand how they all know what to do, but they do.
Ants are also very utilitarian insects. Some ant species have wings, some bite and sting, and many have strong mandible jaws that can bite and cut up larger objects like leaves, wood, other insects and even dead animals.
Carpenter ants are one species of ant common to southwestern Ontario that have particularly strong jaws. In the wild, carpenter ants are extremely important in breaking down dead and rotting trees and plants so they decompose quicker.
However, those same characteristics work against us when ants build nests near our homes. Carpenters ant colonies can chew away at and cause significant damage to the structure of a home. Ants can get into the structure of your home through the smallest crack or hole and can even get in through cracks or holes below grade. They’re looking for a safe place to build their nest near a food source, which is why ants are such a common problem in and around our homes.
Framing isn’t the only part of a home where carpenter ants build nests. They prefer wet, softer or decaying wood because it is easier to bite. Some of the most common places that you’ll find an ants nest are under window and door frames where the surface area might not be sealed properly and water can seep into and soften the wood.
Over time, ants can cause significant damage to the structure and other parts of a home, which is why you should make getting rid of ants a priority this spring!
Getting rid of ants is easy. Just head to your local hardware store, buy some ant killer and lay it down. Easy peasy, right?
Not so fast. Some of the ant killer chemicals that you can buy at the store aren’t strong enough to fully kill the entire ant colony. They kill some of the ants and you might notice a decrease in the number of ants that you see, but these chemicals don’t get down into the heart of the nest so the ants will come right back after a few days.
What’s worse, sometimes these chemicals can work against you, effectively causing the nest to split into multiple nests that can then each grow back to full size. The ants perceive the chemical as a threat, and to protect and preserve the colony they relocate the nest. This is called fracturing and can cause a single infestation to grow into multiple infestations.
That’s why it’s important to take a holistic approach to getting rid of ants, something that a professional pest control company knows how to do. Getting rid of ants effectively is a lot more involved than just spraying some chemicals and calling it a day!
Our technicians are fully trained on properly getting rid of ants, and we’re so confident in our ant removal services that we offer a three-month guarantee: if ants come back to an area that we’ve treated within three months, so will we, at no additional cost!
Trust the experts at Pest Protection Plus for all your pest control and wildlife removal needs, and always remember …
0 Comment