Unlike a wasp/bee nest which is made up of one mass, an ants nest is made up of numerous chambers, some are used for storing food, others for storing eggs/larvae and another houses the queen. They're constructed by the workers and are connected by small tunnels.
Again unlike a wasp nest where all workers go foraging for food and other essential materials, Ants only release a percentage of workers to complete these tasks.
The remaining colony stops below the surface managing the nest, moving eggs and larvae and generally keeping the queen happy.
The ant powder that you buy, will undoubtedly kill the ants that you see in your garden and home. The powder you buy will usually be either Permethrin or Bendiocarb and will be effective for several days maybe even up to a week.
The problem is that the remaining colony will stop below ground and rebuild their numbers until they're back to full strength. They will only then send more workers out.
This will take about 2 weeks. You will then realise that the problem is back and probably repeat the process of applying dust, after all it worked the first time, to find yourself stuck in a repetative cycle.
Ants walk over dirt and bacteria spreading this around your home, as they often feed on the same food we do, they will naturally be attracted to your kitchen and worktops.
You may also have heard about flying ant day. Well it is usually 2 or 3 days over the summer where the conditions are perfect for mating and the ants which have grown wings during their development leave the nest to find a mate and start a colony of their own.
Literally thousands of ants will all leave together and we often get calls to houses full of flying ants, which can be extremely distressing for the home owner.
The female flying ants which are larger leave first, fly some way before they drop a pheromone trail which attracts the male ants who have left some time behind the females.
This ensures that the female ant meets a male from a different colony. They often hit building lines and walls where they drop and burrow into any crack crevice or soft soil to start their own colony.
This is why you find the ants gaining entry to your house via an outside wall. if you find ants inside your house you will nearly always find them outside on the adjacent side of the wall.
New Technology - I earlier mentioned bendiocarb which is often used by pest controllers to deal with ants, the liquid version is brilliant for saturating nests.
However in Decemeber 2020 this will no longer be available to anyone. New insecticides have been developed with micoscopic wax which holds the active ingredient on top of porus surfaces meaning less active ingredient needs to be used within the solution making it safer for the pest controller and customer.
If you want help dealing with your ant problem before it gets out of hand then please fill in the contact form or use the live chat to speak to a genuine member of Kill Line.
It is possible that after a nest has been dealt with that a neighbouring colony will take over the empty nest and the problem will start again.
If you have an ant problem in your house, it is really important that a thorough search of your whole garden and surrounding land takes place. We often find that we deal with several nests to ensure the best chance of a long term solution.
In order to fully deal with an ant problem it is imperative that insecticide is delivered into the nest and the queen is dealt with. Without the queen the colony will collapse and your problem will disappear.
If we can find the nest then a liquid insecticide used to throughly flood all the chambers can be used and if it is successful then an immediate solution is found, often with the problem disappearing within an hour.
Sometimes, a repeat treatment might be required if a chamber hasn't been fully saturated, it maybe hidden in a hard to reach area. If you ask us to deal with your problem we will guarantee an effective solution.
If the nest cannot be found we will often rely upon a liquid gel. The ants will be seen to quickly feed upon the gel. As they do so they leave a pheromone trail which tells the other foraging ants of the location of the food source and more ants flock to the bait.
The problem may initally start to look worse before it looks better with large numbers of ants coming to feed. Of course this is what we want. The more ants that feed on the gel the better, as they take it back into the nest feeding more ants and hopefully the queen.
The bait is really clever as its not actually an insecticide until it is metabolised, meaning the worker ants can carry it back into the nest where they feed it to the other occupants, then becoming harmful killing the colony.
This treatment will take 10 days before you see a reduction in numbers and upto 21 days before you see eradication.
If you'd like Kill Line to deal with your problem we ask politely that you do not put ant powder down before we arrive. Killing all the ants who are actively foraging for food stops two things.
Firstly it means identifying all the holes that the ants are using to access the nest becomes difficult which can often reduce the effeciency of a liquid treatment. It also means that if we decide to use a gel treatment we have no way of getting the liquid to the ants within the nest.
Using powder can often mean that we have to come back to your property 2 weeks later to effectively deal with your problem. It also helps if we can get to your problem earlier in the year.
The actual numbers of ants within the nest are smaller and feeding them with gel means that you have a higher likely hood of feeding the queen and eradicating the colony. It also means that there will be fewer chambers and saturating the nest will be more effective.
At Kill Line we do come across gardens and properties both commercial and domestic where the ant problem is persistent, reoccuring every year.
We can often help deal with these problems by visiting your garden in the spring and applying gel baits housed within specialist feeders in problematic areas. This will often stop a problem before it starts.
If your ant nest is found under paving slabs or block paving, (once the problem has been dealt with) sealing the entrance holes, if possible can greatly reduce the chance of reinfestation.
Kill Line are happy to deal with this for you, we always try our best to not only deal with your problem, but make sure the chances of reoccurance are significantly reduced.
Please get in touch if you need help.