If you haven’t experienced ants invading your kitchen then you’re either lying, or you don’t own a kitchen.
We all hate that morning occurrence when you forgot to clean up the random piece of food on your counter and all of the sudden you have a trail of ants swarming all over it. So what do you do? Most people grab a paper towel and then spray everything down with raid (which is a really good idea for kitchen counters…(not)).
So what’s the right way to deal with ants? And what steps can you take to prevent them from coming in the first place? In this article we will show you some basic steps you can take to get rid of ants in your kitchen.
What not to do
First, when you find an ant trail your first instinct will likely be to grab the can of Raid and start spraying, but stop! This is the wrong thing to do. Spraying any product might kill all of the 500 ants that are in your kitchen, which is good, but it won’t do anything to take care of the actual colony which can contain tens of thousands of ants. Wait a couple days and the ants will likely be back.
Interior
The best way to solve an ant problem is to use a slow-acting product that allows the ants to take food back to their colony and spread it around. That way, instead of killing 500 ants, you attract 3,000 who then each spread to 10 other ants, etc. and before you know it you have gotten exponential spread through the colony. In short – use the ants’ biology and numbers against them. We recommend using a gel based product like Advion or Terro.
Using a gel product will greatly help reduce the number of ants in the colony. Simply apply the gel around the area where you’re seeing activity (as close to the source of the nest as possible). Make sure to use enough product – which in our experience is about 5x as much as you think you’ll need, and always follow the label recommendations.
Exterior
Once you’ve treated inside with the gel product it’s time to move outside. Go out and insect around the exterior foundation to look for any active trails. Often you will find that the trails are exactly where you think they’d be, but sometime they can be tricky to spot. Look especially in cracks in the foundation and around plants that touch the home exterior. If you find activity treat with the gel as needed. We also recommend using a granular product outside like Niban granular which allows ants to take the small granules back to the nest and know down the colony.
Preventative treatment
Once you have knocked down the colony we recommend doing a 3 week follow up to ensure that you break the reproduction cycle of the ants. Inspect for active trails and treat again as needed. At this point you should use a preventative product to spray around the home foundation that will repel ants and other insects from entering the home.
If you have any questions regarding ant control or if you’d like to get on the schedule for a treatment call or text us at 503-985-6523.
