Ant Control – How to Have a Variety of Tools at Your Disposal?

If you have ants in your home, you need ant control. Ants aren’t particularly independent. If you find one ant in your home, you’ve probably got hundreds more hiding in your walls, just waiting for you to leave food out so that they can have a feast!

Most ants have no interest in harming you – other than the occasional bite. According to Research there are over 12, 000 type of ants. The most common ant found inside homes is carpenter ants. While carpenter ants are more likely to frustrate you than harm you, some ant species – like fire ants and red ants – are considered dangerous. In fact, army ants and fire ants are responsible for dozens of deaths in the Australia each year.

If you know you have a problem with one of those two species, play it safe and hire a Pest Control Bundoora professional for your ant control. But what about all of the other ants, that are more of a nuisance than a threat?

Here’s how you can have a variety of ant control tools at your disposal:

- Keep your house clean

Ant control starts with keeping a clean home. Getting rid of crumbs, dead bugs, and vacuuming up dust can keep ants from coming inside your home altogether.

According to a study, carpenter ants seek out protein and sugar. While they normally feed on other dead bugs, cookies and other sugary goods can attract entire colonies. Once they discover a source of food they’ll pick it apart until the food is completely gone. Then, they will spend their days waiting for more food!

- Use several different ant control products

You don’t have to call an exterminator once you discover an ant problem. Most retail stores sell an arsenal of ant control products so that you can handle the problem yourself.

The best do-it-yourself ant control plan involves using a combination of:

Ant Bait – If you want to get rid of ants you have to take out the colony. Ant bait provides a sugary, yet poisonous, substance that doesn’t kill ants instantly. Ants do all the work for you by taking the poison back to their colony where the queen ant will also ingest the bait. Once the queen is dead, so is the colony.

Killer Dust – Ants leave traces of pheromones for other ants to follow so that they all know how to get to the food (which is why you see ants walking in a line). Killer dust produces a pesticide that you can spray along a small crack where ants are entering your home. When the line of ants walks through it, the poison kills them almost instantly.

Yard spray – As of the most effective tools in ant control, yard spray keeps ants from entering your home. Chemicals are spread around the perimeter of your home, killing any and all bugs that get within a one-foot radius. Just make sure you don’t breathe in the chemicals when you’re spraying it!

Ant stations – If you are worried about spreading chemicals around your home, ant stations provide another, non-toxic option. Put a station down where you’ve seen ant activity. Most stations can be left out all summer long.

- Use homemade ant control remedies that aren’t dangerous for your family, like:

Corn meal and water – Corn meal is not poisonous to people, but it is to ants. After ants eat it, the corn meal expands in their organs and eventually shuts down their body’s digestive system.

Baby powder – While it doesn’t kill ants, it does keep them away. Sprinkle some on the edge of your windows, along the back of your countertops, or any other place that ants are using to enter your home.