Ants – Identification, Location and Treatment

This summer has been one of the worst years for ant infestations along the Oklahoma, Missouri and Arkansas regions. Personally it seems that, no matter what we tried to do to get rid of them, they kept coming back.

Before you go full force into treating an ant problem, you need to understand your pest a little better. As many know, ants are social insects, living in colonies with a full-fledged hierarchy.

Characteristics

Ants

Ants have three distinct body parts – the head, thorax and abdomen. They also have bent antennae located on their heads. The color of ants varies, including yellow, brown, red, black and combinations of these colors. Recently, the ants that infested our kitchen window were dark brown to black in color and had 2-3 white stripes along the abdomen – something we had never seen before.

Worker Ants
Worker ants – the ones you see carrying bits of food back to the nest – are sterile, wingless female ants. Bet you didn’t know they were females, as most people assume they are sterile males. Some species of ants have major workers (those larger in size) and minor workers (the smaller ones).

Male Ants
Male ants are often the same size or a bit larger than worker ants, but they have wings. The sole purpose of all male ants is to mate with new queens, dying shortly following the completion of their life’s ambition.

Queen Ants
Queen ants are the largest in the colony, sometimes even 2-3 times larger than the worker ants, so there is no difficulty in telling them apart. As a means of storing eggs, queen ants have extremely large abdomens compared to the rest of the ants in the colony. While they have wings initially, they often shed them after mating.

Mating
Queens live for several years in order to build strong colonies. When queen ants are born in a colony, they swarm with the males, mate and then seek a new nesting site to start a new colony. So, if you see winged ants swarming inside your home, that likely means the nest is in your home too.

Nesting
The nesting habits of ants depends entirely upon the type of ant colony it is. There are several, such as common house ants, carpenter ants and pharaoh ants. My post next week will cover the identification of particular ant species and how to deal with each one. Today’s post is more broad.

Ant Mound

So, generally, ants nest in the soil (when you see those sand-like mounds in the yard with the small hole on top and lines of ants coming in and out). Others nest in homes in out of reach places, like behind moldings and baseboards, under countertops, etc. Other types of ants prefer to nest in decaying wood or under the foundation of a home.

Food
Again, the choice of ant delicacy depends upon the type, but most feed on sweets, starches, meats and fats. Almost every species feeds on “honeydew.” I’m not talking about the melon, but a sweet liquid that aphids and scale insects produce.

These food preferences will likely place your in-home infestations on countertops were crumbs linger, in recycling bins where food particles and liquids (such as soda) remain in the containers, in dog or cat food stores, and in pantries where dry goods like sugar are not stored tightly enough.

Locating
Even though treatment options vary depending on the type of ant colony, one thing remains constant, in order to complete eradicate an ant infestation, you must assassinate the queen. This usually means finding and treating the nest directly.

However, finding the nest can be pretty difficult, especially if you have ants nesting in the walls of your home. They can travel a full day’s journey away from their nest in order to find food, so tracking that travel path can be hard, especially if they come into your house through walls. If you’re certain the ants are entering your home from outdoors, then you need to simply scourer the outside of your home for a line of ants entering in a crevice or crack in the foundation or around windows/doors.

If you’re having trouble locating the nest, set out a desirable food source and check it daily. The ants will find it eventually and then you can follow them back to their nest.

Ants establish a chemical trail when they move, which is why their routes between the nest and a food source tend to be the same. However, just because you disrupt an ant route, doesn’t mean you’ve eliminated the problem. They will just find an alternate way to get there. Again, that means that finding the nest is best.

Treatment
If you’re interested in non-chemical treatment methods, there are a few options, but most of them aren’t as effective as you might like. Of course, first and foremost, you need to store food properly, thoroughly rinse recycling containers, empty your trash regularly, vacuum daily and eliminate food particles around the kitchen.

You can disrupt an ant trail with a mild solution of vinegar and water. Glue traps or water moats (made of soapy water) might work if placed in the right location with no alternate routes around them. If you find cracks around doors and windows where ants are entering your home, seal them properly with caulking.

If ants are entering your home from outdoors, you can use a chemical insect repealing treatment, found at most hardware stores, to spray the perimeter of your home. I will tell you now, however, that spraying alone didn’t help us in this horribly ant infested season. We sprayed our home perimeter 4-5 times since spring arrived and the ants still returned every few weeks. Finding the nest is key.

Once ants enter your home, even after an outdoor spray, there are other options. Bait traps, which lure ants to a poisoned bait that they take back to the colony to share, are one option. Unfortunately, however, they can take several weeks to months to be effective, and you’re never certain if they’ve actually eradicated the colony.

What has been really successful for us this year is the bait Terro. It is a sweet smelling thick liquid bait that you place on waxboard in the direct path of an ant trail within the home. At first, the ants come in droves, which, to the first time user, can be discouraging. However, we saw success with this treatment in the matter of a week – hundreds of ants one day and then not a speck of the pest the next. Mind you, we had to keep the Terro in these locations throughout the summer, but as long as the supply was kept up, the ants stayed away. When the did attempt to return, it was brief.

An immediate death blow to hoards of ants in your home is Windex, believe it or not. No, this does not eliminate the problem, in fact, they’ll be back the next day. However, when used in conjunction with other chemical treatments, Windex is a great way to immediately get rid of the ants that are in your home right now. They were inside our dishwasher this year, and it absolutely disgusted me. So I would spray them with Windex, they would instantly die and I would simply rinse them down the dishwasher drain or wipe down counters with a paper towel. The alcohol in the Windex kills them.

If you find that there is an ant colony nesting in your wall, there is a dust-like insecticide that can eliminate them (make sure its for indoor use). Once you figure out the general location of the nest, drill small holes in the wall (about 1/8 inch in diameter). Most of these products come in ready to use applicators, and you simply squeeze the dust into the holes. Some are available in a bottle with applicators you fill yourself, but if you use too much of the dust, the ants will avoid it. So it’s better to use the prefilled applicators to insure you apply the right dosage.

Now that you have the basics down, you’ll need to determine which types of ant are causing a problem for you and how to eradicate that colony specifically. Next week’s post will help you do just that.