Home Invasion

Ants are coming in to escape the bad weather. When it's cold or rainy, they want to come inside and get warm and dry. But, when it's too hot and dry, they like to come in to cool off, too. So summer or winter, these unwanted house guests barge in and make a mess.

They typically live in colonies up to a foot underground, with a unique social structure that surrounds a queen. She is an egg-laying machine, with the rest of the ants finding food, caring for the eggs and generally doing their part to keep the colony humming.

When it gets too cold or wet or otherwise unpleasant, the foragers come out to scout for new homes. This scout lays down a pheremone trail that the other ants follow. Unfortunately, wiping out the scout's pheremone trail won't prevent the ants from storming your castle. They'll just send another forager instead.

So the ants are in your home looking for another place to set up their home, but they're also there for food – and they like the same foods we do. They like sweets: fruit, chocolate, plant sugars; but they also will eat fat, protein and other insects. They'll pick up any morsel that could give them energy, even if it falls beyond our idea of food. But again, they come in looking for shelter too, so a tidy kitchen isn't necessarily going to keep you ant-free.

Home remedies – like cinnamon, baby powder and vinegar-solution – probably work just well enough to keep the wives' tales alive. They may kill the ants that are in the house but they don't permanently deal with the colony. Which makes sense, because these colonies can be huge.

Non-repellant chemicals are best to use in these types of situation – the kind the ants don't realise they're walking through and carrying back to the colony. If an ant can detect a chemical that's harmful to it, it won't walk through it and it could get trapped in the house. Killing the ants that are in your house and then periodically treating the area around the house to create a barrier will ensure that you gain control.

A word of warning though: protect yourself against improper use of insect sprays, which can poison you if you over-use them or don't keep the air circulating in the area. If you are keen to use insect sprays, then keep an eye out for wooziness and the flu-like symptoms of chemical poisoning.

Instead of using insect sprays, which can also leave a film behind where they're sprayed, a window spray is ideal to kill the line of ants until you can deal with the bigger problem through further DIY pest control or by hiring the services of a local pest control firm.

Article provided by Dynamic Pest Control