Preventing Carpenter Ants
From Invading your Home
Ants are one of the most common pest insects in North America, and carpenter ants can go beyond annoying and into the area of causing some serious damage to your home. Like other species of ants, carpenter ants are very hardy as well as adaptable, and many methods of eliminating them have failed. This isn’t a bad thing, because ants are an important part of nature and it would be no good to humans at all if they were to be eradicated.
Of course, an understanding of the role ants play and letting them invade your home are two different stories. Part of an effective integrated pest management strategy is preventing numbers of pest species from getting out of control; that is, making sure their population does not grow to problem proportions, or that the pests stay where they belong (with carpenter ants, that is outside). Here are some ways to prevent carpenter ants from coming inside your home.
* Seal up! Make a good inspection of your home every three months during warm weather and make sure that there are no cracks in the foundation or in your window seals. Ants can take advantage of even tiny compromises, so get any seams you see sealed right up.
* Store everything properly! Like other ants, carpenter ants will be attracted to just about anything sweet. Keep your recyclables stored outside and in a place that you monitor frequently, such as a kitchen cupboard. And make sure to take them back on a regular basis! Always wash out any containers that have had sticky substances stored in them right away.
* Keep wood away from the house. Piles of wood, including firewood, make great areas for original nesting sites for carpenter ants as well as several other types of pest. Keeping wood piles ten feet or so away from your house will mean that the ants won’t make your interior the site of their next colonization effort.
* Understand their behaviour! If you understand just a little bit about ant behaviour, you will find efforts to prevent infestations that much easier. Ants have to travel along trails laid down by scouts in order to find a food source (did you ever see the movie A Bug’s Life?). A solitary ant is probably a scout. Take care of it, and then wash the immediate area thoroughly; even if she found some food the other ants will never be able to follow the trail. If they already have, take care of the line and follow the same procedures!
* Use ant barriers. Another thing that you can try is creating natural barriers to keep ants out. This is a daily job as the barriers are scent based and need to be applied regularly, but ants won’t enter your home through barriers such as soap sprays and oil.
Carpenter ants are great, but we want to keep them outside! Following the above steps will help ensure that no indoor infestation becomes established.