How to Prevent & Eliminate Ant Infestations in Your Home

Ants aren’t the worst things to enter your home. But they can be annoying and unpleasant to live with. As harmless as they often are, nobody really likes seeing ant lines up their walls or their ceilings now do they? The great thing is you won’t have to hire an expert to get rid of them. Banishing them from your home would require more than the conventional act of spraying pesticides on them though.

Understand that to totally get rid of the infestation, you have to target the ants that you don’t see rather than the ones that are already crawling up and down your home. If you don’t target the nest and the queen itself, the queen will just keep laying eggs and replacing the worker ants that you kill outside their nest. Here are some tips to help you get rid and prevent these little buggers once and for all.

Ant Prevention and Control

The key to controlling any ant infestation is prevention. Remember, ants come into your home looking for food and water. Then they leave trails back for their comrades to follow and that’s the start of them infiltrating your home. Take away the sources and you’ll be able to get rid of them. Here are some tips to follow:

• Clean spilled food and drinks from any surfaces immediately. Don’t leave them out to dry and make sure to get the corners properly.
• Mop and sweep floors regularly
• Empty your trash regularly
• Don’t leave unfinished pet food out and limit water sources as much as possible especially if you have an ant infestation
• Keep the grass mowed and prevent tree and shrub branches from reaching the house
• Check and seal gaps around electric wiring, cables, and other potential entry points
• Seal any ant entry point such as cracks and crevices and make sure that windows and doors are tightly sealed with no gaps. Keep screens in good repair as well.

How To Get Rid of Ants

1. Identify the Ant Trail

The first thing you need to do is identify the trail they’re using. When ants find food and bring it back to the nest, they leave behind a chemical path that others follow. Once you have identified this, you can now leave some sort of poisoned food or ant bait for them to pick up and bring back to the nest.

2. Use Ant Bait Indoors

Avoid the temptation of simply spraying the worker ants with some sort of pesticide. This will only kill the visible ants but more will come and replace them from the nest. Instead, use these worker ants to bring back ant baits to the colony and kill them off from inside the nest. These ant baits are primarily made from boric acid which is harmless to humans and other animals. When placing these ant baits, make sure that the surrounding area is clean so it will be the only thing to attract the ants and place it close to the ant trail.

3. Wait Patiently

It can take days or even weeks for your ant baits to clear out the nest depending on how large it is and how many queens it has. Keep an eye on the bait and replace it if the ants manage to empty it. You’ll see them decreasing steadily in time.

4. Use Spray Pesticides Outside

If you manage to track down the ant colony outside your home, then you can use liquid pesticides. Follow the directions well and drench the nest with it so it’ll reach the queen. Be careful though and make sure that these are indeed the ants causing the infestation. Some ants are actually beneficial plus the pesticide can also kill other helpful insects. So apply very carefully.

5. Prevent, prevent, prevent

Once you’ve gotten rid of the infestation, it’s time to prevent it from ever getting back. Keep your home clean. Be careful of spilled food and drinks and always take our trash regularly. Don’t invite the ants back into your home. And make sure to seal off any entry points and regularly inspect for them. Once you’re done with that, you can rest easy in an ant-free home.