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Are you seeing ants around your Brentwood home? Worse, are you finding them inside? When ants get in, they can be extremely frustrating. This is because ants work together in large numbers to break food down and bring it back to their nest. But, how do they find food? And how do all those ants know how to work together to bring it home? Do they talk to each other? Do they follow a command structure? Is the queen sending orders out to her loyal subjects from deep inside her lair? Actually, every worker ant takes part in directing their colony without even realizing they're doing it. It happens naturally.
Have you ever found a single ant crawling around inside your home? That's a worker ant. Its job is to find food. When it does, it lays down a pheromone scent as it brings a small piece of food back to the nest. When other workers pick up this scent, they follow it to the food and do the same thing the first worker did. They lay down a pheromone scent. As more and more ants lay down this scent, more and more worker ants come to grab their portion of the treasure that was found. In a surprisingly short amount of time, one ant can turn into thousands of ants. And that can be startling to find inside your home.
If you find ants covering a piece of food inside your home, your first response is probably going to be to throw that food out. That's a good idea. But throwing food out isn't going to fix your problem. You're still going to have lots of ant activity inside your home because the pheromones are still there.
Okay. So, all you have to do is clean up the pheromones, right? We wish it was that simple. But the reasons ants got into your home in the first place is because they found entry points in your exterior walls and foundation. You need to address those entry points. So, while your initial inclination may be to clean, we recommend doing a detailed inspection first. You can't see the pheromone trail but you can see the worker ants following it. Track that trail back to the location ants are coming in. This can help you to seal things up and prevent more ants from coming in.
It is also a good idea to call a pest management professional (PMP). Tracking ants can be complicated for an individual who does not have an education in pest control. Your PMP will know where to look, what to look for, and what treatment methods will quickly arrest the problem.
Once your ant problem has been dealt with, the best solution to keep ants out is to invest in ongoing perimeter service. Ants are just one of over 47 harmful and destructive household pests we guard homes against with our Perimeter Plus Pest Control plan. Give us a call today to learn more.