March weather is not exactly warm, but there is a shift away from the frozen temperatures of winter. Just as we notice the change in season, so do ants and as the ground heats up, they start to come to life. If parades of ants are beginning to show up around your home or business, consider a call to Northwest Pest Control.
The ants you generally see are carpenter ants but in the Pacific Northwest, there are three different species of carpenter ants. The most common are black ants with reddish legs called Camponotus. There are also moisture ants that can be found around rotting wood, and we have tree ants that come in both red and black, and, surprise, hang around trees.
Contrary to popular belief, carpenter ants don’t eat wood they just like to burrow in it leaving behind little piles of sawdust— a sure sign the ants are in your area. The ants you see in your home are likely from a satellite nest and when they awaken they go in search of their parent colony that’s often located outside. They build their original nests in decayed wood and as they add satellite nests the preferred location is solid wood or the insulation or wall voids found inside your home. That travel they take back and forth between nests, as well as their hunt for food, is why you see trails of them scurrying around.
Another sure sign of an ant problem is if you start to see them swarming. In the northwest, ants swarm from February to June. Swarmers are not produced until a colony is about 6 years old, so if you see swarmers, you’ve been sharing space with ants for quite some time. And you haven’t been living with just a few ants. A typical western carpenter ant colony could have anywhere from 10,000 to 100,000 workers. When you consider it takes just 60 days for an egg to become an adult ant, the large numbers in colonies make sense, but it doesn’t mean you have to just accept them.
To prevent and eradicate ants, it’s best to turn to professional pest control. The nest or nests will have to be located and removed and with one colony potentially having up to 20 nests this is no simple job. The team at Northwest Pest Control will provide the service you need. We will inspect your property both inside and out, remove the nests and apply a perimeter treatment that is transferred from ant to ant until the colony is wiped out. One ant may seem small and insignificant but be certain where there’s one there may very well be thousands more nearby. Call us today for an estimate.