Ants in My Chattanooga House?

It’s springtime again – Time to enjoy the fresh air, beautiful sunshine, colorful blossoms, the smell of flowers in the air, and lines of ants on the kitchen floor. Okay, you probably aren’t going to enjoy that last one, but ants are definitely part of spring. When temperatures warm, ants will make their presence known. Here are some ants you’re likely to find in or around your Chattanooga home.

Little Black Ants

These tiny creatures are dark brown or jet black and can be found all throughout the United States. They range in size from the 1.5mm worker ants, to the 4mm queens. They have antennae with 12 segments, and a thorax that is unevenly rounded. While these tiny critters have a stinger, it is too small to be a threat to humans or pets. Being an omnivorous insect, little black ants will eat anything from sweets and vegetables to greasy, oily foods. If they get into your pantry or on your counters, they can contaminate foods, but other than this, they are only a nuisance pest.

Odorous House Ants

These stinky little critters also live in most of the country and measure from about 1/16 to ⅛ of an inch in length. They have brown to black bodies, twelve segments in their antennae, and a thorax that is uneven. Foods these ants like to eat include honeydew, meats, sugary foods, dairy products, and vegetables. Odorous house ants, like the name suggests, give off a bad smell when they are crushed. It has been described as the smell of rotten coconut. Other than this unpleasant characteristic and the possibility of contaminating food items, these ants are mostly a nuisance pest.

Carpenter ants

Carpenter ants are black or reddish-black. They are easily distinguished from other ants by their larger size and their heart-shaped heads. They have a smooth thorax, can be found throughout the U.S., and are far more than just a nuisance.

If you are seeing little black ants or odorous house ants in your home, there is little cause for alarm, but when carpenter ants appear, you’re going to want to take notice. Carpenter ants tunnel through wood and create galleries, and it is possible for these pests to be inside the wood of your home or inside decks and outbuilding for many years without being detected.

If you’re seeing ants in your Chattanooga home, Active Pest Control has a solution that will work for you. With 5 decades of experience and a ranking as one of the top 25 pest control companies in the United States, we are equipped to take care of any pest problem you’ll find in your home this spring–including ants.

Spring is better without ants. Give it a try with pest control you can trust from Active Pest Control.

Seeing Ants In Your Georgia Home?

It just so happens that your home provides everything an ant and several hundred of it’s friends need to survive. We’re talking about food and shelter. If gaps around doors and windows or cracks in the foundation are present, these pesky ants will slip right in. You’ll likely see them hanging out in the kitchen, bathrooms and other areas of the home you’d consider off limits to these foraging pests.

Here in Atlanta, we deal with both nuisance ants and wood destroying ants. Nuisance ants are relatively harmless. Their presence in your home is annoying but not considered threatening. If they trek through your pantry or across those cookies on your counter, you might want to throw out the food but you don’t have to worry about a bigger health threat. The carpenter ant is a wood destroying ant and again is not dangerous to your health. The same cannot be said for wood structures. Carpenter ants don’t eat wood like termites do but they do tunnel through to create galleries. They may even establish satellite colonies in your walls. Left untreated, carpenter ants can inflict significant damage to a structure.

So to recap, if you are seeing ants in your home, it’s because they’ve found a way in and are liking the accommodations. Now how to fix this problem.

To prevent ants from getting inside, you must start on the outside. You’ve got to make sure that the exterior of the house is sealed tight. That means any tiny hole or gap is identified and corrected. Next you will want to make sure that all hedges and shrubs are trimmed away from your home. Though they look nice, landscape elements often provide a nice bridge to the house.

Moving indoors, you must be sure to eliminate any potential food sources. Food on the counters and open packages in the pantry must be outlawed in your home if you want to deter ants. Use containers that seal to hold food. Crumbs and spills should be cleaned up right away as well. Don’t forget to run a cleaning cloth under the toaster and sweep under the major appliances to get rid of crumbs hiding.

If you already have an ant infestation in your home, Active Pest Control offers effective home pest control services that get rid of ants and other household pests. Best of all, our program protects your home all year round. Contact us today to find out how our Atlanta pest control pros can help you solve your ant problem!

Spring Ant Deterrents

Do ants make you want to squeeze both fists as tight as you can, look up into the sky, and scream, “Aaaaaaaaaaaaants!” Trust me when I say, “you’re not alone.” Ants are a pernicious and resilient insect. They breed like crazy, and an ant mound can have more than one queen. This makes them able to avoid all your attempts at do-it-yourself pest control. But you’re not completely without recourse. There are some things you can do to deter them.

Don’t give them a meal. If you have a superhighway of ants, it is because they found a food source. When you see one of these, your goal should be to figure out what they found. It might be a dish of pet food, an apple core that rolled behind the couch, some spilled cereal under the fridge, an open trash can, or any number of things. Sometimes it can be something as simple as a few chunks of toast that fell on the carpet. Whatever the food source is, dispose of it.

Once the food source is gone, find out where those ants are coming in. It will usually be somewhere low. Find the entry point and use a caulking gun to seal.

There is probably a good chance that those ants can find another way in, so it is also important to keep them from picking up the smell of trail pheromones, which allow them to find their way to a food source. Spray soap or window cleaner along the path the ants were taking. You’ll kill a lot of them, and get rid of the scent as well.

Keeping things clean and sealing up entry points are a good first step to keeping ants out. If they don’t have a reason to be in your house, they usually won’t bother to make the effort. But bothersome ants getting into your food isn’t the only issue you have to deal with. The ants also live around your home and can drive you crazy when you’re outside. To stop this, you’ll need a pest control company to pay you a visit and eradicate those colonies. This is especially important if you have carpenter ants. Carpenter ants burrow through the wood of your house, and can cause structural issues that are expensive to repair.

Now that winter is done, ants are going to start building their populations, and spreading. Spring is the best time to stop them before they damage your home and drive you crazy.