subject: Pest Control Review On Black Ants In Your Home [print this page] Black ants ( Lasius niger ) are common all over the globe and though they generally nest outside they are regularly found within houses causing a serious nuisance. They are social creatures and live in colonies containing workers (infertile females), males, queens and grubs (larvae). Ants mate on the wing, so the "flying ants" are either males or juvenile queens.
You will find ants nests in dry earth around plant roots, with sandy soil in particular attracting colonies. The sand employed in house foundations, garden trails and patios forms a good site for the queen ant to start a colony. Nests are increasingly being found inside the walls of properties (cavity walls, as an example ). One a colony develops it can be difficult to get rid of.
The ants found indoors are often employee ants, which are foraging for food for the queen and the grubs. They have found that buildings inhabited by humans are a superb source of provision, particularly sweet or sweet items.
Worker ants are scavengers and collect seeds, nectar, and even dead insects to take back to the nest. They also prey on greenfly, blackfly and other tiny insects, so can't be thought to be all bad. Though it is upsetting and a bother to find a large number ants in your house, black ants do not transmit any serious diseases.
However, you should remember as well the ants could have travelled through unpleasant or dirty places during their foraging and before entering your house. This means that they can taint food, making it not suitable to eat.
Do not leave food exposed if accessible to ants.If they have contaminated food, dispose of in the dustbin ( wrapped first to stop it smelling in the hotter weather ). They can bite and they are able to squirt formic acid as a defence mechanism which can irritate those with sensitive skin.
There is no single method available to the public which is guaranteed to achieve success in eliminating ant problems. Often it is better to depend on professional pest control companies. You can try the proprietary powders available at DIY stores and hardware shops however this often proves only to be a short-term answer, firstly thanks to the low dosages of active components permitted in domestic insecticides.
Secondly, there may be so many ants in one nest that it is not easy to exterminate the entire colony at one time. You will regularly find that the difficulty re-occurs year on year and it is often worth spending some pounds to have the issue professionally treated.
The most common treatment that a professional pest control company will carry out is a spray treatment of the infested area. This can sometimes have the consequences of reducing or maybe removing the difficulty for a period of some weeks or months. The operative should spray inside and outside the property where ants are seen and attempt to get insecticide into the nest itself although this is rarely possible.
The most successful, but also most costly system of curing an ant infestation is to drill holes into the cavity walls of the property and inject insecticidal dust into the hole itself. This forms an impenetrable barrier, that the ants cannot cross, and is 99.9% successful in removing ant infestations. Though the treatment is more expensive it lasts for several years depending on how dry the cavities are and has the benefit that once the holes are drilled it is an easy and relatively inexpensive matter to re-inject the cavities with insecticidal dust every few years.
