Ants in the house are a nuisance. Your dog likes to pounce on them, your little ones like to pick them up and bring them to you, and finding them milling around your sugar bowl is pretty unnerving. These are pests that find their way into your home in the springtime and then you end up spending the rest of your summer trying to get rid of them. Well, that stops now! Here are some helpful tips for Indianapolis ant control to prevent ants from arriving in the first place. At Action, we think you shouldn't have to spend April through August fighting these obnoxious insects.
The ants you are most likely to encounter in your Indiana home are odorous house ants. These tiny ants are shiny and black and are the most common ant species encountered by homeowners in our service area. You’ll know you have odorous house ants if you crush one and it emits a pungent odor. Because ants tend to come out in the spring when the weather warms up, now would be a good time to put prevention measures into place to keep these pests from finding their way into your house.
Here are a few helpful prevention tips:
- Ants will enter your home through any cracks or crevices that they can find in its exterior. Eliminate these possible entry points and make your home into an impenetrable fort- this will keep ants as well as many other pests out!
- You can also limit the amount of food sources that ants have access to inside your home. This means cleaning up crumbs and spills and taking the trash out more often. It’s also good to protect food sources that are in your pantry. Be sure to put food goods that are in bags into airtight storage containers to keep out hungry ants.
- Remove vegetation from directly around your home. Plants and flowers around the immediate perimeter of your home can attract ants and other pests to your home.
- Eliminate areas of moisture. Ants will look for moist places inside your home, so run a dehumidifier in your basement if there is excessive dampness and keep bathrooms well-ventilated.
Following these tips should help make sure that you don’t play host to spring invaders. Although odorous house ants may be annoying (especially when they visit in large numbers!), at least they don’t cause any damage to your home. One ant that can cause damage is the carpenter ant. This ant will bore into the wood in your home to create its nest. It will then come out of the wood to forage for food inside your home. These are not pests you want to deal with! Call in a professional at the first sign of a carpenter ant problem.
If our prevention tips are coming to you too late and you already have an ant infestation, we recommend that you don’t head to the hardware store to buy ant bait or other insecticides. These can be dangerous if applied or used incorrectly and they don’t typically work. The best way to eliminate an ant problem is with the help of an ant control professional. At Action, we have many years of experience in eliminating ant problems. If you choose our year-round pest control services- the TermaPest® System, we’ll help keep your home ant and pest-free throughout the year. Give us a call for more information on what we can do to help you avoid an ant problem this spring and to learn more about our TermaPest® System.