Ant invasions are one of our most common pest infestations in Santa Clarita. Unfortunately, out of desperation, many people do things that make the ant problem worse.
Here’s what NOT to do:
- Don’t spray your home perimeter with home improvement store pest spray.
- Don’t spray down the kitchen and bath with more home improvement store pest spray.
- Don’t apply any chemicals without carefully reading the label, especially if you have children, pets or edibles in your yard (fruit trees, vegetable gardens, herb gardens).
Now the why…
Home improvement store products are mostly contact poisons. They kill on contact and will work on the occasional spider, but for an army of invading ants, they just don’t do the job. The reason is that ants are incredibly social insects that can detect these products and although spraying an ant trail with them will kill the ants in the trail at the moment, as soon as new ants entering the area sense the chemical they will re-route themselves to avoid being affected.
Additionally, spraying the perimeter of the home (as you may notice the pest control company do) may make your ant problem a nightmare. Again, for the same reason noted above. The home store pest spray is a contact poison and is repellent in nature and if ants have moved into your walls, treating the perimeter after the fact, will trap them in the home. They will not go through repellent materials to get outside to eat, so they will look inside for food instead. You will have ants everywhere!
Professional licensed pest companies have access to non-repellant materials that the ants cannot detect and therefore allow the ants to not only get exposed, but the materials also transfer to other members of the ant colony through their social interactions to further reduce ant populations. In most cases, our firm does not require spray treatment inside for an ant invasion. We use a combination of ant bait and perimeter treatment to get the problem resolved.
If you need an ant invasion stopped, call Santa Clarita’s ant control experts today! Learn more about our Santa Clarita home pest control and commercial pest control solutions.