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Ants
Ants
Ants
come in more than twenty household varieties and have many tastes.
Some prefer sweets, others like grease, and still others feed on
insects and seeds. Consequently, do-it-yourself eradication with
bait is often a trial-and-error effort. To get rid of these annoying
indoor species that contaminate food and in rare cases bite humans
and pets, find and destroy their nests and remove their source of
food by practicing vigilant housekeeping and storing foodstuffs in
tightly closed containers.
Carpenter Ants
are frequently confused with termites because they, too, destroy
wood. Unlike termites, however, they do not eat the wood, preferring
instead to tunnel channels through it in order to enlarge their
living space. Although a carpenter ant has wings, its front pair is
much longer than the back pair; its termite cousin has two pairs of
equal length. Another distinguishing feature of the carpenter ant's
body is a pinched-in waist like that of a wasp.
If you find little piles of sawdust
near the baseboards of your house, suspect that carpenter ants are
at work. Since their nests are extremely difficult to find, we can
help to determine the extent of damage and eliminate the colonies.
Carpenter ants like damp locations:
underground, in dead stumps, and in firewood. They can be found
inside wood structures where there are water leaks: around windows,
chimneys, bathtubs, sinks, and drains. Unlike termites, carpenter
ants do not eat and digest wood. Ants tunnel through and live in
wood. While pressure treated wood can kill termites, it will
not kill ants
Treatment for carpenter ants involves
the application of materials into areas conducive to their activity
and into known nests.
More About Ants
Ants are one of the
top pest problems in New Hampshire. Effective ant control can be
difficult, but there are some things you should know about how ants
behave.
Entry: Ants can enter
your home or business through even the tiniest cracks, seeking water
or food substances in the kitchen or storeroom areas.
Scent trails: All
ants leave an invisible scent trail which contains pheromones for
others to follow once they locate the food source.
Ant Nest locations:
They can nest anywhere in and around your house; in lawns,
walls, stumps, even under foundations.
Colony size: Ant
colonies can number up to 500,000 and whole colonies can uproot
and relocate quickly when threatened.
Colony Lifetime: A
colony can live a relatively long lifetime. Worker ants may live
seven years and the queen may live as long as 15 years.
Do-it-yourself
treatments do NOT work: Most home ant control approaches only
kill the ants you see. Some truly effective treatments can penetrate
and destroy nests to help prevent these pests from returning. Also,
home remedies don’t account for the fact that different kinds of ant
infestations require different treatments.