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How do ants get into your house


How Are Ants Getting in My House? - Plunkett's Pest Control

Unfortunately, it’s not difficult for ants to find a way to sneak into your home. These pesky pests can get into your space through cracks in walls, gaps in the foundation, through spaces underneath your flooring, and more. Sometimes, ants simply crawl into your home through windows and doors in search of food and water. However, knowing where your ant problem is coming from is key in getting rid of an infestation.

It may seem like ant infestations are inevitable. Every spring, tons of these bothersome bugs make their way into your space. You see them crawling across countertops, between cracks in your bathroom, and underneath the trash. But how did they get in in the first place?

How are ants getting in my house?

The first step to keeping ants out of your space this spring: find the root of the problem. A few ways that ants make their way into your home include:

1.

Through cracks in walls

In most homes, there are gaps large enough for ants to crawl through around your windows, doors, and vents. Look for these cracks where the wall meets the floor and ceiling, around window and door frames, and near outlets, pipes, and electrical lines.

2. Through gaps in the foundation

Ants are quite small, which means they can easily squeeze through gaps in your home’s foundation. Not only can ants get inside through these gaps, once ants infiltrate your foundation that can cause some serious damage to your home.

3. Through flooring

Sometimes ants travel inside your flooring. They can establish routes underneath carpet, tile, and hardwood floors.

4. Through doors and windows

Do you ever leave your windows open to get a little fresh air in the house? Do you ever leave your doors open while you’re running in and out on a nice day? This gives ants the perfect opportunity to sneak into your home. Plus, window frames often collect moisture and rot over time—this rot can provide a home for several types of ants.

5. They are accidentally carried inside

There’s a chance that you accidentally brought ants inside with you. Ants can hitch rides on houseplants, toys, used furniture, and storage tubs, for example.

How do I get rid of ants in my house?

Believe it or not, it is possible to rid your home of an ant infestation. But it’s important to act quickly. Here’s what you should do if these pests invade your space:

How do I prevent ants from coming back?

Once you’ve done all the hard work to get rid of your ant infestation, make sure you’re taking precautionary measures to keep them out. You don’t want those awful ants coming back to wreak havoc on your home. Keep ants out by following these tips:

Get and keep ants out by hiring a professional pest control company

If you’ve tried our tips and tricks from above and you can’t seem to keep ants out of your home or business, get in touch with the professionals at Plunkett’s. Our expert team can rid your space of pesky pests and take measures to ensure they stay out.

How Do Ants Get Inside Homes? | Control Ant Infestations

Ants inside your home or apartment can be a seasonal or year-round problem. Many ant species build their nests outdoors, and become a nuisance when they forage for food inside your home. Once they discover a good food source, they may continue to come inside, collect their food and leave to take the food back to their outdoor colony. However, other ant species enter the interior of the building, build their nest inside and become permanent indoor residents. Some of the more common ant species that may invade and choose to reside inside are pavement ants, carpenter ants, odorous house ants, thief ants, acrobat ants and pharaoh ants. Any of these ants can be challenging to control, but the pharaoh ant is known as one of the most, if not the most, difficult indoor ant to control. Unless you live in one of the southern states, outside and inside ants are usually a problem during the warmer spring, summer and fall months than during the winter.

Inside ants may be found near their food sources, moisture and in hidden, protected places like wall voids, under appliances, behind window frames and beneath floors. Ants are commensal pests, meaning they like to live close to people and eat some of the same things we do – sweets, meats, starches and liquids. It isn’t surprising that they like to take up residence inside our homes, apartments and office buildings?

How does the homeowner or building manager control ants? Most homeowners and building managers agree that ant control one of their most worrisome problems because ants are frequently encountered and persistent. There perception that there isn’t a single practice or strategy to control all ant infestations is entirely correct. Prevention and control activities often differ with various ant species, ant nest locations and the ant’s preferred foods. As with most other pest problems, using a complete, integrated pest management program works best. Some important components of a successful ant control program are:

When using ant control products, keep these things in mind:

reasons for their appearance, ways to deal with them and preventive measures

Imagine that you want to make coffee in the morning, but an unpleasant picture awaits you in the kitchen: small ants are reaching for the sugar bowl with a thin live ribbon. They busily run for food, not paying any attention to you. What to do with it? House ants, the cause of which is not yet clear in your kitchen, can cause a lot of trouble. Let's try to figure out where they came from, and how to overcome this invasion. nine0003

Characteristic description of ants

Ants are very interesting insects. Their life is organized, and social roles are clearly distributed. In each anthill, as in a small state, the following categories of insects can be observed:

When there are too many worker ants, they may decide that it is time to split into several colonies, and after taking one or a couple of queens, they will go in search of a new home. All worker ants are females drunk with the queen's salivary extract. nine0003

Observers have noticed that workers also have a clear specialization . They are not torn between different types of work, and everyone is busy with their own business. In the anthill, there is the following distribution of roles among workers:

No matter how interesting it may be, it is hardly a good idea to put your own apartment at the disposal of a small organized state. This means that uninvited tenants will have to be evicted.

Why do ants appear in apartments? You could bring it yourself from the street on the sole or bottom of the bag. These ants will not settle in the apartment, but they can visit it in search of prey. nine0003

red pharaoh ants can be considered a real disaster for residential buildings. It is they who occupy the apartments and equip their nests. The fact is that these insects are thermophilic, and can only live in heated apartments.

Ants do not come to a new territory without exploring it. First, they send several scouts , depending on the amount of provisions, they decide to settle here or look further.

So, if you comply with sanitary standards, then the likelihood of these insects appearing in your apartment is less. But, hand on heart, we note that even the most clean housewife in the kitchen will find food for the ant family. nine0003

How do ants come to apartments

Often ants get into a person's house from the street, crawling into a room on their own or getting into a dwelling on clothes, shoes , any products. In a situation where ants appeared in the apartment, there is a risk that they came from neighbors.

In this scenario, it will be several times more difficult to deal with them, and it is necessary to act jointly with the rest of the residents of the apartment building.

Main ant tracts can be:

  1. Ventilation shafts.
  2. Pipes.
  3. Cracks in foundations and walls.
  4. Ground floors, verandas and cellars.
  5. Slots in window openings and frames.

Having made their way into the house, the family will choose a place where it is warm, little light and humid. Ants cause a lot of trouble for . Looking for food, they visit toilets, garbage chutes, technical shafts and garbage cans, and then crawl over your tables and products.

In this way, an insect can bring into your home dysentery, diphtheria, typhoid fever , salmonellosis, cholera, helminth eggs. So forget about pity, you have to fight small insects, otherwise you yourself and all the people you love are in danger.

Preventive measures

You are out of luck if you have unscrupulous neighbors nearby. Having settled with them, the ant colony will begin to divide, and sooner or later, some part of it will move to you.

To prevent your apartment from becoming attractive to an ant family, you need observe preventive measures : clean thoroughly, keep the trash can and the floor around it clean, pack food tightly, close sweets tightly, do not leave crumbs on the table, wash pets' bowls well, change the water in their drinking bowls.

This reduces the chances of disturbing neighbors bringing infections into your home. However, it does not give a 100% guarantee that they will not appear. So, you need to learn how to deal with them.

Fighting house ants

Now you understand where the ants came from in the apartment. The reason for their appearance is also now clear. It remains to deal with the measures of struggle.

The best measure is to team up with your neighbors and call the pest control service . These insects have strong intra-family bonds, and can live in a large colony of several nests on different floors.

Local struggle, within the same apartment, can be carried out with folk remedies, using boric acid or chemicals: gels, sticks, sprays or liquid insecticides. It helps to add ammonia to the water when cleaning.

Several recipes for ant poison based on boric acid:

  1. Sugar, boric acid and some water, mixed into a liquid mash. The tool is laid out in places of accumulation, and along forage paths. The ants will eat themselves, and take the poison to the anthill. It can take up to seven days to destroy a small nest.
  2. Mix hard-boiled eggs (yolks) and boiled potatoes with boric acid and sugar. Roll into balls and arrange in clusters. Make sure that insects do not have access to water. Replace poisoned bait once a week. nine0008

Be careful with baits if there are small children and animals in the house. Watch out for their safety.

It should be remembered that it is easier to overcome the invasion of ants together. Even if you and your neighbors do not want to mess with exterminators, then engage in simultaneous persecution of , this will give a higher effect.

How to get rid of ants in the house: simple and effective ways.

Content:

Ants live not only in the forest. They can also live in residential buildings. These insects are much more dangerous than you might think: they carry infections, their bites can cause a severe allergic reaction, they carry food residues around the house, which causes mold to appear in it. To prevent this from happening, we will tell you how to get rid of ants in the house. nine0003

Ant species

Ants do not live in isolation, they can only exist within the colony. It includes:

Causes of ants

There are several reasons for the appearance of ants in the house:

Ant control principles

To get rid of the ants once and for all, you must first get rid of the females, because they are the ones who produce new offspring. And for this you need to find and neutralize the nest. An ant colony can be in the following places:

To determine the location of the nest, it is enough to follow the ants, they themselves will lead you to their home.

So, to destroy the nest, you can use the following methods:

If you have not found a nest, then you need to fight the worker ants. They usually run along baseboards, behind furniture, next to food and the trash can, and like to live in the kitchen and bathroom. To combat such ants, use substances that are poisonous to them. It is necessary to make sure that the worker ants either become infected themselves, or take the poisoned food and take it to their colony. And then the poison will do everything for you. nine0003

Use of folk remedies

First of all, we recommend folk remedies for ants, because they are affordable, and most importantly, they are safe for you and your loved ones.

Sugar with soda

Take a tablespoon of soda and the same spoon of powdered sugar. Mix the ingredients and pour the resulting powder onto sheets of paper. Put them in the places where the ants move. They will bring the bait to their nest, and the soda in its composition will lead to the death of insects. nine0003

Boric acid balls

A simple and effective folk remedy for ants in the house. To prepare it you will need:

Mix the ingredients, roll the resulting mass into small balls and spread them in the kitchen, in the bathroom and in other places where ants congregate. Boric acid will destroy the digestive system of insects. Instead, you can use borax or starch. nine0003

Yeast balls

Also an effective remedy to get rid of ants. To prepare it, mix sugar, water and yeast. Roll the resulting paste into small balls and spread them around the house. The ant will eat the bait, the yeast in its stomach will swell and lead to the death of the insect. Instead of yeast, you can use semolina.

Plants

The scents of flowers and herbs will keep ants away from your home. The most effective are chamomile, lemon balm, mint, rosemary, dill, parsley, cilantro, anise. Place fresh or dried plants in small bags and place them in the kitchen, bathroom, behind furniture, near air vents. nine0003

Essential oils

Also an effective way to prevent the appearance of ants are essential oils of lavender, cedar, needles, juniper, cinnamon. To prepare an aromatic solution, follow these steps:

Pour the solution into a spray bottle and treat all surfaces in the house with it, pay special attention to baseboards, kitchen and bathroom. nine0003

Use of insecticides

If it was not possible to remove ants with folk remedies, use insecticides. They can be purchased at almost any store.

Traps

This is one of the most effective ways to get rid of ants. Traps are small boxes that contain bait and toxic substances: fipronil, imidacloprid, hydromethylnon. They destroy the nervous system of insects and lead to paralysis. nine0003

Place traps where ants usually run. The insect will crawl into the trap, get smeared with poison, and then return to its lair. There it will infect other individuals, including the uterus. After 2 weeks, the ants will be gone from your home.

These traps are completely safe for people and animals. They can also be used to prevent the appearance of ants, because toxic substances remain effective for several more months. nine0003

Gels

They operate on the same principle as traps. They contain poison and a substance that attracts ants.

For the ant repellent to work, apply the gel in a dotted line where the insects usually move. Usually the ants come into contact with the gel and bring its particles to the nest. The poison spreads throughout the colony, with the uterus and other individuals dying after a couple of weeks.

Do not rush to immediately wash off the gel, because the toxic substances in its composition: diazinon, imidacloprid, chlorpyrifos - will be active for several more months. This is necessary in order to kill not only adult ants, but also their larvae. nine0003

Crayons

One of the cheapest and most proven means to fight ants. 95% consists of chalk and gypsum, the remaining 5% are toxic substances zeta-cypermethrin and deltamethrin.

Take the chalk and draw lines along the baseboards, in the openings of windows and doors, behind the furniture. The ants will cross the lines, the poison will stick to their paws and then fall into the nest. This will lead to the death of the entire colony in about 2 weeks.

Wear gloves when using chalk, and remember to update the lines after wet cleaning. nine0003

Powders and granules

Also an effective tool with which you can get rid of ants. The composition of the powders contains poisons such as chlorpyrifos, piperonyl butoxide, cypermethrin.

Sprinkle the powder or granules on the pads and place them in the ant's roaming areas. You can dissolve the drug in water, while getting a poisonous paste. The substance will fall on the paws of the pests, and then the principle of the epidemic will work: the ants will bring poison to the nest and infect the entire colony, including the uterus. The effect will be visible after 2 days. nine0003

When using, observe safety measures: wear gloves and a mask. Powders are not recommended for use in homes with small children and animals.

Professional pest control

If you have not been able to get rid of ants with insecticides and home remedies, then call professional exterminators. In just a few hours, they will destroy both the worker ants and the ant nest.

Caution: pest control uses strong substances that can harm people, animals and plants. Before disinfection, remove or cover food, upholstered furniture, plants. Leave the room during processing. Pest control will be carried out using a hot or cold mist generator that converts chemicals into poisonous smoke that penetrates into all hard-to-reach places. nine0003

After processing, the room should be thoroughly ventilated. It is not recommended to carry out wet cleaning for 2-3 weeks: the chemicals should work for another month after treatment. This is necessary so that not only adult ants die, but also their larvae.

Ant prevention

To get rid of ants once and for all, follow these tips:

Output

To get rid of ants in the house, we offer the following methods: