Ant Control

If you've got ants in your home, you're dealing with a highly intelligent, highly organized enemy. Spotting just one ant speeding along your baseboard or tabletop is actually as good—or as bad, should we say—as seeing a whole trail of them. Here's why: ants live in closely-dependent, ordered social systems, and communicate with each other efficiently via pheromone trails. As soon as one ant discovers the fruit bowl on your counter top, it'll head home, leaving a line of pheromones behind to alert the whole nest to the feast. Hundreds or even thousands of ants can occupy one nest—and now they are following the trail right back into your kitchen.

 

The Peach State is no stranger to ants. Historically, Georgia has provided an essential role in the study of North American ants. Many of the earliest descriptions of North America ants were of species from Georgia, and several species of local ants are believed to be exclusive to our state.

 

Your home should be exclusive to you and your family, but nuisance pests too often move in rent-free. Here is a guide to some of the ants you're most likely to find making themselves unwanted guests in your home.

 

As ants go, dark brown or black carpenters are giants: they are one of the largest ants in the United States. Though most species of carpenters don't have the same sweet tooth as many of their relatives, human homes are still desirable to them. They dig tunnels for nesting in decaying wood and insulation, which can exacerbate existing structural damage in your home.

 

Here in the South, we've learned to know and fear the aggressive Fire Ant. The origin of their name is clear: it comes both from their bright red color and from their stinging, painful bites. Fire Ants can overrun your yard with the mounds they build to live in, and they will sometimes venture indoors looking for food or water.

 

The itty-bittiest ants you're likely to see (if you look closely, that is) is the Rover Ant. Rovers can be as small as one-sixth of an inch long and range in color from dark licorice-brown to light honey-colored. Like all ants, they can carry many times their body weight, enabling them to carry away crumbs of food much bigger than they are.

 

Odorous House Ants are small and may be black or dark brown. They come indoors not just to eat the sugary foods and dead insects they enjoy but also to take shelter during rainy weather. Step on one, and you'll understand how they earned their name (warning: the smell is most often described as "rancid").

 

Reddish-brown and about one-eighth of an inch long, Crazy Ants are common in Georgia. Instead of marching single-file like most organized ants, they move in an erratic-seeming pattern, which gives them their name. They like sugary human food like most other household ants, but these crazy crawlers also like to keep warm by nesting in your circuits and wires.

 

These are warriors of the ant world. It is not uncommon for Pavement Ants to fight to the death for territorial dominance. You can find them in sidewalks and beneath rocks, but they commonly invade houses in spring and summer. Pavement Ants have a taste for greasy foods and meats.

               

Learning to identify which household pests are bugging your home or workspace is the first step towards a pest-free environment but leave that to the experts. Misusing pesticides and other chemicals in your home could be dangerous, and trial-and-error DIY home treatment is not only time-consuming but could end up being more costly in the end.

At Abe's Pest Control, we are the experts on the ants that love Georgian homes. We'll work with you to investigate the infestation and design an affordable and effective extermination plan to ensure that your ant problem becomes yesterday's news—not tomorrow's headache.