Are you being pestered by ants even if you did all you can to keep them out?
Perhaps you have ensured that no food crumbs are left lying on your kitchen, your bedroom and the rest of the rooms in your house. But still, you find them coming in. Why?
No, there’s no problem with your house. The problem is with these pesky ants. Foods are not the only reason why they are invading your home. Ants are known as great hunters not only for foods but they also roam far and wide for many other reasons.
We will examine these other reasons in this article so that you will be able to understand ants more. In the process of learning more about them, you will also be able to protect yourself and your house from their marauding.
Ants Escape From Bad Weather
There is a study conducted by Stanford about ants. The researchers found out that ants invade homes in California during summer droughts and winter rainstorms. This would indicate that ants could invade your home because of bad weather.
Like humans, these little critters are also affected by inclement weather. If their colonies outdoors are attacked by snow, floods, heat and all types of bad weather, they need to escape to more favorable environments.
Unfortunately, if their outdoor colonies are near your home, your place will be a likely target. The extreme weather the world is experiencing now could cause more ants to leave their natural nesting sites for friendlier environments.
This underlines the need for you to prepare for a possible ant invasion of your home. Thankfully there are lots of preventive measures that you can deploy before a single ant can step on your premises.
Ants Are Also Looking For Shelter
Ants may also invade your home because they are looking for shelter. Like people, shelter is one of the basic necessities of the ant kingdom.
If your house is experiencing an ant invasion, it is very likely that some ant scouts have found a corner in your home that has all the conditions that they need to build a community shelter.
Or it could be that some swarmers have discovered your house to be a shelter candidate. The job of swarmers is to fly off from their colony when they have already matured and build another nest to reproduce another colony. And they are prolific.
There is no guarantee that your house will not be invaded by ants. When they need to, these pesky insects will be looking for the best nesting sites. So the only thing left for you to do is to arm yourself with preventive measures even if there’s still no ant in your house.
Ants Follow The Scents Of Other Ants
Another reason why ants are infesting your home even if it is spic and span is that they may have picked up a scent that has attracted them. The scent could be the sweet scent of sugar or candy, the scent of other ants and even their own scent if their colony has previously invaded your home.
Perhaps these new ants were triggered by a collective memory of their colony which indicated that your bedroom or kitchen is where they can find food. No amount of ant spray can prevent them from invading your home if this is the case.
The reason is that members of this colony have been pre-programmed to scout your home for food regularly. In that case, this colony will send out scouts at regular intervals. The best way to prevent them is to eliminate the entire colony so that there will be no collective memory left.
There are times when ants pick up the scent trail of other ants which have previously infested your home. Perhaps the ants invading your home now have just followed this previous trail. When they can’t find food at the end of the trail, they will wander around your home to find it.
Ants Need Moisture
Like people, ants need moisture to live. If water is no longer available in their colonies, they will look for other areas where they can get fresh supplies. That is why if there’s high humidity in your house, ants will be attracted to it even if there’s no food around.
If the weather outside is hot and dry, the water supply of ant colonies will begin to dry up. The ants will start to look for new water supplies. In their search for water, they may discover your home. If there’s plenty of water just lying around, you will soon see an ant nest inside your house.
There’s an ant specie called Lasius that loves to nest in places with high humidity. These ants exude the pleasant smell of citronella. But they are known to nest outside of houses and even indoors especially in wet wood foundations.
Ants Can Spillover Your Home
Another reason why there can be ants in your house even if you keep it squeaky clean is that they can spillover from your neighbor. This is a very likely possibility if your house is attached to another house such as an apartment dwelling.
If your neighbor is not very fond of house cleaning and there’s an ant colony inside it, some of the scouts in that colony may spill over your premises. If the population in that colony expands to its limit, their next target could be your home.
What You Can Do
There is no time to waste if you find that ants are starting to nest inside your house. Buy some ant baits and place them in areas where you have seen the first ants coming in. Or you can buy boric acid powder.
Put some of the powder in several places across the ant trail. The ants will carry the powder back to their colony and contaminate all its members. Hopefully, they will all be exterminated.
If you find them in your bed, clean your sheets and mattress at once. Move your bed to the center of the room. Put some boric acid powder on the floor around your bed. Hopefully, that will do the trick.
The point is: always be on the watch even if your house is neat and clean. Don’t let the ants build a nest inside your home. Eliminate the invaders at once and you will have no problem with their colonies.
I have use different companies ants baits without any success. The baits on the market now are not strong enough to eliminate ants. Sprinkling cinnamon around the areas where ants are seen does better than sprays, granular & baits.
That was really interesting, I now have somewhere to start! I am thankful this was easy to understand for me, now I can get started. Wish me luck!! My house is over 300 years old so even though a lot of work has been done There are for sure a lot of place to get in! They are around the house and there are red ants in the garden! That’s another thing all together!
I have the same problem and I have been using a spray bottle with bleach and
Water and so far it’s been working. I spray twice a day .the sink the drain and
Around the faucet and I spray my sponge. So far so good. I hope it helps .
I’ve never failed to get rid of ants completely by using inexpensive Taro, a liquid you out on cardboard provided with the Taro. I nor anyone I’m related to or friends with work or are invested in the Taro company. Taro just works. It attracts ants with sugar laced with boric acid and carries it back to the nest to kill the entire colony. I paid $2.99, yes, only $3.
I am here to say YES, it does work! I was hoping it would work but nothing seems to work these days so at most, I figured it would at least kill some. Wrong! It took 2 days. I literally had huge carpenter ants coming through a crack into my bathroom. (I always poured my Coke down the bathroom drain.) Once they started, there were sometimes over 30 an hour at their busiest! I know, because I’d stand in the bathroom killing and counting every one of them! I watched where they were coming in and going out from and put the container there. From then on, they’d like inside it then find their way back out to bring it back to the nest. 2 days! GONE, not ONE. I was worried they’d remember this Spring and they’d return. NOPE! BUT, now I have normal sized ants coming in the front bedroom window from a tree. I just ordered more on Amazon, one day delivery. In the meantime. I’ll be squishing those ones until it arrives.
Same! Taro is excellent for ridding yourself of sugar ants. They form a death circle and the survivors return it to the nest. I haven’t been able to get it to attract the larger solo ants that scout only my bathroom.
I put yellow sticky tape, like for plants, where I thought they’d crawl over and that seems to be super effective. I hate to kill the things, but God they pinch us up worse than mosquitoes! I also use a salt line of PF Harris food-grade d earth in windowsills. I hope those ants dry out like little mummies!
I’m currently crying right now— I’m a kid and there was an ant in my bed. If I tell my parents anything they’ll say I overreacting and I dont have access to anything on my own— what do I do? :(.
Kid: I wish I would have seen this sooner. Ants BITE. I know, because I’ve actually had them in my bed while I was sleeping and woken up to being bit, come to see it was a large carpenter ant! You HAVE to tell if you ever see more than one ant coming in. The ants won’t just disappear and you won’t be able to get a restful sleep knowing they are around. There’s a product called TERRO. I promise it works in like 2 days! Tell your parents do they can buy it. It’s NOT expensive. Try and see where they are coming in from so you place the TERRO cartridge there. I hope you were able to tell.
If it was just one then it’s no big deal if u keep seeing them then check behind your bed or where there coming from vacuum and wash your sheets
Try and talk to one of them when you get a chance, and make sure you’re not sounding like your moaning. If you explain yourself properly and then you tell them it also wakes you up when they crawl on you, but remember to keep your calm and maybe they will listen.
Good luck.
I use vinegar and water, bleach and water, peppermint oil and water, orange oil and water. I have managed to rid large streams of ants but they just reoccur elsewhere, food or not. I now have them in my bed. They’re in my living room rug, bathroom, esp in kitchen and spray every single time I go in there and they just come right back. I’m completely exasperated at this point.