Say Good Riddance To The Ants In Your Kittitas County Home

Why are ants so difficult to control? One word: persistence. Those tiny insects don't give up—which is why home remedies and repellents don't work well to get rid of ant problems. What does work? We're glad you asked. The best pest control in Kittitas County is science based. The products and methods of a science-based ant control solution are developed using the scientific method and are backed by research. Home remedies are largely backed by speculation. Join us as we look at the strange and mysterious ways ants infest homes. We'll discuss how your pest management professional outsmarts ants to arrest ant infestations and share some naturally effective ant prevention tips. If you want to skip the part where you learn unique and fascinating facts about ants and get to the part where you don't have ants in your home anymore, you can hit the fast-forward button. How do you do that? Contact Prosite for effective ant control in Kittitas County. Our pest management professionals know all about ants, and they're here to help.

One Ant Usually Means Many More

A common warning sign of an ant infestation is the occasional appearance of one tiny, little ant. When you see one ant, you can bet there are hundreds (or more likely thousands) of ants where that ant came from. Why? The reason is that an ant isn't going to go too far from its home in search of food, and it isn't going to overcome giant obstacles to appear in your home. Let's quickly break these down.

Food is a strong motivator for ants in Kittitas County. They are attracted to the smell, and they are continually looking for food. They're hard workers in this respect. But an ant doesn't want to travel a hundred feet for a meal if it can find one ten feet away from its home. Plus, worker ants have patterns they follow. They scramble around on surfaces, run into each other, groom each other, and take off to scramble around some more. It is rare to find one worker ant far from the rest unless it is a scout. The scout can go much farther than the other ants. As it travels, it leaves a trail of pheromones to help it find its way back to the nest. If it finds food, it will leave another pheromone on the trail. The new smell lets other ants know that food was found. They follow the smell and end up inside your home. Each ant that finds food adds to the pheromone trail that leads to the food as it returns to the nest. How quickly a swarm of ants can appear in your home depends on the proximity of the nest. But in all cases, the nest isn't too far.    

When a scout ant searches for food, it can defy gravity by climbing exterior walls and walking across ceilings. But ants don't choose to scale walls if it isn't necessary. When you see a scout ant in your home, it is likely that it entered through a first-floor entry point. It wants to quickly find food, lay a trail, and get other ants involved. On some level, the scout must know that the other ants will not be happy about climbing the entire side of a home and going down through the wall void to get to a food source.

The bottom line is that seeing one ant in your home is an indication that there is a nest nearby. There is no way to know exactly how far the nest is from that little scout. The only thing you can know for sure is that other ants can get into your home the same way that scout ant did.    

Why And How Ants Find Their Way Into Our Homes

There are two reasons why ants get into homes. We covered the first reason. Ants are looking for food. The second reason is often overlooked. Ants don't just need food. They need liquid as well. Sometimes food is not the catalyst for an ant infestation. Therefore, it is critical to consider moisture problems and other sources of water.

When ants enter your home to collect food or liquid (yes, they can pick up and carry droplets of liquid), the ants will use available entry points and routes. It is essential to understand common routes if you hope to keep ants out. Here are a few examples:

• Ants enter homes through cracks in foundation walls.
• Ants climb under doors and through gaps in weatherstripping.
• Ants climb on trash receptacles and quickly enter homes through exterior doors that are near the receptacles.
• Ants find their way through gaps around window and door screens.
• Ants climb on landscape vegetation and enter homes through gaps around first-story window frames.
• Ants can climb on tree branches and enter homes in large numbers through high entry points.

When ants invade your home, they may only collect the food source and return to the outdoor nest because some ant species don't create indoor nests. If you seal exterior entry points, you may keep these ants from doing it again. Ants that create indoor nests are more trouble. They can continually invade your stored foods, grow a population, create reproductives, and make more indoor nests. No contact with the outside world is needed. 

Professional Pest Control Is The Best Way To Get Rid Of Ants

If you seal entry points and ants keep getting into your home, the best solution is professional ant pest control. A pest management professional uses a science-based approach to address ant infestations. 

Inspection: A professional can identify the ant species, track the ant trails, evaluate conducive conditions, and create a treatment plan that will fully address your problem.

Treatment: Your technician will utilize many products to achieve effective control. Some products are used to directly target the specific ant species and eliminate the colony. Some products are used to monitor ant activity. Certain products and methods are used to prevent ants from continuing to access your home.

Follow-up: Your technician will check back until your problem is completely resolved and no ants remain indoors.

Along with indoor treatments, it is sometimes necessary to consider outdoor ant control. In some cases, targeted treatments are needed to address mounds near your foundation walls and other exterior ant pressures. Contact your local pest control service provider for assistance. For ant pest control in Kittitas County, contact Prosite for service. We can guide you toward a targeted solution to address your specific issues.  

Naturally Effective Tips To Prevent Future Ant Problems

Once a professional has applied ant control solutions, you're all set. It is at this point that you'll decide what to do to prevent future ant problems. There are two aspects to effective ant prevention. There are methods that naturally work to keep ants away, reduce ant populations, and block access to your home. You can use these to get a level of control. The second is to have a licensed professional apply ongoing exterior pest control. Let's look at each.

Natural Methods

Ants are persistent, and you must be equally persistent to keep them out. Here are a few common ways to stop them at every turn.

• Reduce moisture around your home by cleaning gutters and repairing any damage in your gutter system. Trim bushes and plants in your landscaping, and remove leaves. What does all of this do? You'll reduce the moisture droplets ants drink. You'll prompt plant health to deter aphids, which produce honeydew ants love. You'll reduce fungus, which ants eat. You'll reduce insects and bugs. Ants eat insects and bugs, both alive and dead.
• Keep trash in covered containers and wash your containers periodically to remove the scent of decaying organic matter. Ants are drawn to the scent from a distance.
• Address lawn weeds as soon as possible. Ants eat nectar and plant sap found in weeds. Diligent weed control will have a big impact on ants.
• Trim tree branches away from your home to prevent ants from using them as bridges.
• Use expanding foam to fill in holes and voids, and seal around pipes.
• Use a caulking gun to seal exterior door and window frames where gaps are present.
• Keep the interior of your home as clean as possible and protect food so that ants don't find a bite to eat indoors.

These, and other general practices, will provide you with a general level of protection against ant problems. You can add on to this work by adding pest control service.

Yearly Pest Control

Every season of the year, your pest control service provider will apply what your exterior needs to reduce the insects ants eat and to apply an application to your exterior that keeps ants out. When your pest control is persistent, ants won't have the opportunity to break in.

Are you in Kittitas County? Contact Prosite to get more information about how residential pest control works to keep a long list of pests out of your home, including ants. Life is better without pests.