Ants can be interesting, little creatures that work restlessly through the beautiful months to stock up their stores for winter. Many children enjoy keeping an ant farm to watch how ants create tunnels underground. But in a nice plastic, secure ant farm should be the only way you allow ants to enter your home. If you are having issues with ants marching across your floors or countertops, you may ask yourself, “How do I get rid of an ant infestation in my house?” You can try some prevention and deterrence methods to keep ants from coming into your home. But if the ants have already invaded, identifying where the source of the problem is will help you eliminate these pests from taking over your house.
Prevention
It’s no new news that ants don’t travel by themselves. When a source of food is identified, it is only a matter of time before the whole gang shows up in your kitchen to feast on crumbs, sticky spills, or even the contents of your pantry. To prevent ants from entering your home in the first place,
- Stay on top of cleaning floors and surfaces.
- Spray vinegar around possible entry points to deter ants from entering.
- Caulk around windows and door frames. Ants can enter through tiny cracks so checking for small entry points will help keep ants from coming in.
- Keep pantry food in airtight containers.
Treatment
Unless you have structural damaging infestations like carpenter ants, who burrow into wood to build nests, ants do not live inside your home. In most cases, ants live in their mounds outside of the house but come inside in droves as if your house were the local grocery store. You can kill ants on contact, but this will not stop the traffic from the outside source from continuing to frequent your kitchen. If you identify an ant infestation, you can:
- Buy ant bait traps to put in strategic spots in your home
- Spray insecticides on outdoor ant colonies if you believe they are the source of your indoor problem
- Use home remedy bait such as borax mixed with powder sugar and water to make a paste to set out for the ants to feast upon and bring back to the nest.
- Call a professional pest control company to thoroughly eradicate your ant problem
If you find yourself losing the battle against the ants entering your home, or you have identified the ants to be the destructive carpenter ants that can cause the structural integrity of your home to be compromised, call a professional ant exterminator to quickly rid your home of this relentless insect. If you live in or around Monterey County, call the trusted professionals at Target Pest Control today to reclaim your home from ants.
