If you have these insects, it is important to find out how to find an ant nest in your apartment. After all, if you do not eliminate them at once, they will constantly multiply and fill your home. Despite the fact that ants do not cause much harm, living next to them is still not very pleasant.
Red ants are the most common species that can settle and begin to reproduce in an apartment. You should study in detail everything about the nest of these insects so that you have the opportunity to find it and destroy it.
Types of house ants
Despite the diversity of these insects, there are only two species that prefer to live in a human home:
Pharaoh ants with
Pharaoh queen;- Ordinary black.
The first type includes ants of various colors - from yellow to bright red. These insects are very small in size and are not so easy to detect in an apartment. Their body length is only 2 mm. Ants of this species cannot live outside, so they must use human housing as a home.
Common black ants are better suited to living on the street than in a human home. For them, an apartment is an inexhaustible source of food and a favorable habitat. Often a person himself brings them home from the street on clothes or other things. Their body length is about 4 mm and they are easier to spot.
There is also a separate subspecies of ants – thief ants. Most often they are found in private houses in nature. If there is an anthill near your home, it is likely that a colony of ants will soon visit you for supplies.
Other means
It is not always possible to get to the nesting site, especially if we are talking about a private house, so you need to fight against insects in other ways. The choice is very wide, check out each of them and determine which method is most convenient for you:
- Gels. Most of them contain substances designed to attract attention. An ant that touches a gel applied to a vertical or horizontal surface can carry away enough to infect a large number of individuals and, possibly, the queen itself. The effect manifests itself over time, usually a month of active use is enough to achieve the desired result;
- Crayons, dusts. While not as toxic as gels, they take longer to kill insects. Draw lines along all routes, update them as necessary. If there is no stable effect within two months, use more effective drugs;
- Traps. A mechanical method in the form of double-sided tape will reliably protect important places from the invasion of black insects. The method requires minimal effort and expense on the part of the homeowner; various baits, most often poisoned, are used to attract them to the sticky surface.
Each method is effective in its own way, but the work of clearing the house of ants can be considered completely completed only if they do not appear inside the living space for three months.
You need to know them by sight
Black ants with a queen
Not a single colony of ants can exist without its queen - the queen ant. It serves to reproduce new ants - lays eggs and raises young individuals. All the worker ants feed her and protect her from danger. If the queen dies, the entire anthill will die. First of all, you need to find and destroy it in order to make the fight against insects much faster and more effective.
The queen looks like an ordinary ant, only much larger and larger in size.
Prevention
Preventing an ant infestation in your home is easier than getting rid of them. What you need to do to prevent the appearance of ants:
- Clean regularly, especially in the kitchen and pantry;
- do not leave food, especially sweets, in the public domain;
- prevent the appearance of rubble from things, newspapers, boxes;
- plant strong-smelling flowers at home, for example, geranium (if you are not intolerant to odors);
- you can hang dry bouquets of tansy, lavender, mint;
- place sachets with lavender in the cabinets;
- Regularly wash the backs of cabinets, floors, and walls with a weak solution of ammonia and vinegar;
- wash floors with essential oils added to water or with a special floor cleaner.
When at least one or two ants appear, you need to immediately start fighting so as not to endanger the house itself and all household members.
What do ants eat?
The most important reason for the appearance of ants at home is the search for food. The listed species of ants are omnivorous. They prefer sweet foods, such as sugar or leftover jam, but they may well enjoy a piece of bread or even spices. The main danger ants pose is as carriers of infectious diseases. The most accessible place to look for food is the trash can, in which colonies of pathogenic bacteria grow over time. If you have ants at home, it is important to block their access to garbage - insects can crawl on a variety of surfaces and spread harmful microorganisms.
House thief ant
This type of pest is engaged in creating an anthill near the nests of larger relatives. They got their name because of their way of life. Sometimes they raid neighboring nests to steal food and larvae. Small insects have a brown, red or light yellow shell. Pests settle in the voids of cabinets and walls, preferring rotting wood.
Reproduction rate
Ant eggs
The fertility and viability of the entire colony depends on the queen. The queen lives on average more than 10 years. In a human apartment, there are optimal conditions for the life and development of new ants, so the queen is able to lay eggs every year. Over the entire period of life, the number of eggs laid by one female exceeds 500 thousand. And in one anthill there can be several oviparous females.
The eggs hatch into larvae that are fed by the workers, after which they pupate and within a month and a half a new adult ant is born. Their reproduction rate is very fast; in just a few months they are able to occupy the entire kitchen and move to other rooms.
Turf ant
The body of these pests is black or dark red. They get inside the apartment through cracks in the concrete. The pests get their nickname because they usually build their nests between pavement tiles under the turf. They also make nests in cracks in panel houses. Therefore, it is easy for them to enter the premises for food. The turf ant is the most harmless, as it is rarely seen in the apartment.
Ways to fight
There are many insecticidal agents, but not all of them are suitable for controlling ants. The primary task is to destroy the queen ant, which is located in a secluded place, well protected by worker ants. Most products are designed to instantly kill the insect, but this is ineffective, since only ordinary ants die, whose numbers will soon be restored. One of the best control methods is the use of gels. They contain slow-acting poisons, and the gel can go directly to the uterus as food.
Calling a pest control service
If the moment when you could kick out the uninvited guests on your own has been missed, and the apartment is almost completely “covered” with red or black insects, do not despair. Don't waste your time looking for effective remedies. In this case, the SES or a private pest control service will help you. This treatment has many advantages:
- guarantee - specialists themselves will select the necessary types of exposure that are guaranteed to destroy all pests;
- absence of chemicals - exterminators can completely abandon chemicals (at the client’s request) and use chladonite - the latest method of freezing parasites with nitric oxide;
- result - professionals will give recommendations for further prevention.
However, there are some disadvantages to this procedure. First, you will need to leave the premises for the duration of the treatment. Secondly, you will have to pay the craftsmen for the work.
Reasons for appearance
Black ants are not as dangerous as red ones.
Ants are attracted to warmth and pleasant smells. Red individuals prefer to be warm. That is why they are looking for a warm place in all different ways.
Insects often “move” from their old place of residence. The “moving” of red ants begins when food runs out at the old settlement point. Crowding caused by a large colony may also be a reason to change their place of residence.
Ants come for garbage. Often, untidy people have such unwanted neighbors. Dirty dishes in the kitchen, bread crumbs, spoiled food - a buffet for red ants.
Insects run away from neighbors. It also happens that the reapers initially live and feed in neighboring anthills. When the neighbors decide to get rid of them, the individuals simply run away to the nearest apartment (house).
One of the reasons for the appearance is the presence of a garbage chute in an apartment building.
Who wouldn't refuse to be next to a person?
The most common household pests are black, red or yellow ants. They choose warm rooms with high humidity. Voracious insects are found in boxes with cereals, behind baseboards, under the sink or bathtub between tiles that have fallen off the wall. There you can also find settlements of small red pest ants.
Interesting! Under the influence of food and room temperature, the color and size of insects change. So red ants can turn yellow, and black ones can turn brown. As a rule, house ants are smaller
wild
.
Residents of warm latitudes are annoyed by pharaoh ants, who build their nests in old boxes, under furniture or linoleum. Their main requirement for habitat is high humidity and temperature.
We suggest you read: Where do wasps live in nature?
Description of species
It is necessary to get rid of insects from the first days of their appearance.
When considering red ants (reaper ants, carpenter ants), it is worth clarifying the fact that they are forest and domestic (pharaonic). They differ in color and degree of damage caused. Both species are orange in color, but pharaohs have light stripes across the abdomen.
For your information. Households are the main pests. They spoil food and pollute the room in which they have built their nest (food scraps and corpses of other insects accumulate near them, this can lead to the development of fungus).
House ants are also carriers of various diseases. Forest creatures rarely attack human habitation, but accurately. The main danger posed by them is the most terrible bites, which feel like burns.
In addition, there are several more varieties of fire ants, differing only in color:
- redheads;
- brown;
- ruby red.
Otherwise, there are no differences between insects of this type. They reach 2-6 mm in size. The body, like that of other subspecies, consists of a head, chest and belly. Red creatures are social, therefore hierarchical relationships are developed within their range:
- females;
- males;
- workers.
Red ants prefer to appear where the climate is warm, building a small anthill nearby. Vegetable gardens, country gardens, greenhouses, bathrooms, etc. are often chosen for living. Sometimes they can attack human habitation.
Attention. The red ant's bite contains poison. Cases of liver failure and death have been observed.
How to kill red ants
To destroy the ant family, it is necessary to carry out disinfestation, spread out gel baits, and also think about carrying out general cleaning and repairs. Initially, red ants populate the lower floors; when they multiply en masse, they move further upward. If insects are found on the 9th floor, it means that it will be difficult to completely destroy the parasites. If there are loopholes, favorable places for the formation of nests, they will appear again. After successful baiting of insects, it is recommended to do cleaning and repairs - seal the cracks in the walls, floors, window sills, and put a fine mesh on the ventilation shafts.
