Ants are one of the most common household pests, and almost every home without ongoing pest control has seen ants inside at some point. Once you see some ants, you can usually expect that more ants will follow. They use scent to navigate, following the smell of food and of other ants so preventing them from coming into your home in the first place is the best way to keep them out altogether.
How to Prevent Ant Infestations
An ant infestation starts with worker ants venturing out to scout for food. Once they find a promising source, go back to their home and send a message telling more ants to begin traveling back and forth, creating that tell tale line of ants we associate with an invasion.
The food sources ants are after include sweets, grease, and proteins, all of which can be found in various combinations in most of our food. Keeping the first few worker ants from finding these sources of food is essential to preventing the entire colony from following. To do this:
- Keep Your Home Clean – You’ll want to regularly sweep and vacuum floors and wipe down countertops to remove stray crumbs. Avoid letting dirty dishes sit out overnight and clean out trash cans as well. It’s also important not to leave any open food sitting out, including leftovers, unsealed packages, and pet food.
- Seal Any Holes – The smallest pest ants in Roseville at 1/16” big, so the holes they enter through can be miniscule. Go around windows and door frames with a caulking gun and look for other cracks around the outside of your home that may be big enough for ants to enter through.
- Store Firewood Away from Your Home – Carpenter ants often hitch rides in firewood, so you want to store any wood well away from your home. This makes it more difficult for the ants to cross from infested wood into the structure of your property where they can do real damage.
- Keep the Ground Dry – The ground around your home, that is. Many ant species like moist soil for building their nests. By ensuring that gutters drain away from your home and sprinklers aren’t directed towards your foundation, you can keep ants from going near those locations.
- Use Ongoing Pest Control – Professional pest control uses modern treatments to create a barrier around the outside of your property that ants and other pests will be unable to cross. This provides an extra layer of protection against aggressive ant species.
If you already have ants in your home, you are going to need more aggressive methods for getting rid of them. Ants have an advanced sense of smell and will continue to follow paths made by ants that came earlier, making simply killing the ants you see ineffective.
Instead, your options include over the counter baits or treatments, or professional pest control. Over the counter ant treatments may have some success with certain species, but typically offer only short term relief.
Professional ant control gets to the source of the problem. ADAPT Pest Management offers ant control in Roseville and throughout Placer County, using advanced methods to target the entire colony, not just the ants that have found their way inside. As part of our ongoing pest control service, it is also the most effective way to prevent ants year round. Contact us to schedule Roseville ant control services today.
