Common Household Ant            The Dreaded Carpenter Ant                  More Common Carpenter Ants

From big to small… ants are a pain in most homeowners rears.  We use sprays and traps and still, we have ants. 

Prevention:  As with all pests, the best prevention is home maintenance.  Keeping crumbs of food off the floor is always a good habit to get into, but this will not guarantee to keep ants out of your home.  Make a regular check around your home looking for ant trails going into your home.  As you read some of my other articles, you will find I am very big on prevention.  Regular checks around the home and a few landscaping recommendations will keep you home pest free.

A trick of the trade is boric acid.  When thinly mixed with water and sprayed on the ground, not on plants, on the ground around your home, will help eliminate ant populations.  Boric Acid is safe and mixing it thinly in a water solution make for ease spraying.  The acid dissolves the waxy film on the ants exo-skeleton and the ant dehydrates.  Don’t spray on your siding as it leaves a whitish residue, but up on the foundation works ok. 

If you find the large black ants, these are bad for your home.  They are carpenter ants.  Bad critters.  If you have a good sized infestation, you can actually hear them gnawing in your walls… eerie sound.  If you find these… call your local pest control guy.  The money is well worth it.

Sugar ants… the itty bitty red guys… call the Pest Control guy… they have very large colonies and, if not taken care of, can spread multiple colonies throughout your home… multiple colonies of 100,000 little red ants in each is not a good thing either.  

Otherwise, use the trick above before you get an infestation and you will be ant free.  For other informitave tricks read up on my articles on bees, wasps, hornets, spiders, cockroaches, and mice.  www.profitableinsights.com/pestcontroltips