Ant Pest Control Measures To Keep Your Home Free From The Annoying Pests
Ants can be a big annoyance when they start coming into your home in huge numbers. Since there are so many ants outside, it's hard to keep the pests out of your home if you don't implement pest control procedures. You might even need the help of an ant pest control professional to eliminate an infestation and keep the ants from coming back. Here are some essential steps for controlling ants.
Cut Off Their Food And Water
Ants are out wandering in search of food all day, so you might see an occasional ant wander through your house if your house isn't sealed properly. When you see a line of ants marching around your kitchen, that's a sign the ants have found food and they'll probably keep coming back until you cut off their food and water supply.
Block Ants From Coming Inside
Look around the outside of your home for areas where ants can get inside your house. There are probably several places you can seal with caulk, such as around the windows and door frame. If you don't know how to plug the holes, talk to a pest control company. They might provide the service as part of their ant control treatments, and the side benefit is plugging holes keeps out other bugs as well.
Clean Scent Trails
When an ant finds food when it's out hunting, it leaves a scent trail that other ants detect and follow. That's why ants usually march in a straight line along a trail. If you kill the ants you see in your house and clean the trail, you can keep other ants from coming inside.
However, if you have a kitchen with crumbs in the pantry or a trashcan that has strong food odors, other ants will find the source of the food odor and they'll just put down a new trail. Killing ants you see inside your house is usually not a good way to eliminate the pests permanently.
Put Out Bait
Talk to your ant control professional about the best way to deal with your problem. You might use repellents or insecticides around the exterior of your home to keep ants away and focus on not letting the ants get inside. However, you could try using bait instead.
The ants carry the bait back to their colony so all the ants are killed eventually. If you decide to use bait, you don't want to use repellents or the ants will have a hard time finding the bait. An ant pest control professional will probably identify the type of ants you have to determine the type of food they like best and then choose the type of bait to put out for them.
Eliminating ants this way takes time, so you'll need to put up with ants marching around your kitchen for a while so they can get the bait and haul it away. However, ant bait is often an effective way to eliminate an ant infestation.
For more information on ant pest control, contact a professional near you.