Small ants are common summer home invaders in New Jersey. When home owners find ants in the kitchen, their typical response is to get out the ant spray and hose down their kitchen. Believing they’ve taken care of the problem, they are appalled when ants return in a few days or a week and keep returning no matter how many times they spray.
What New Jersey home owners don’t realize is that home treatments only make ant infestations worse. Ant colonies number in the tens of thousands. Spraying may kill a few dozen, but there will always be more to take their place. Instead of eliminating an ant problem, spraying and other home treatments just moves it around. Ants will simply find a new path into your kitchen.
To successfully eliminate an ant problem, the entire colony must be killed, including the egg-producing queen protected deep within the nest. Ant control products available at home and garden stores are repellents. They create a barrier that ants don’t want to cross, but do not prevent ants from taking a new route into your kitchen. Repellent products do kill ants that receive a direct burst of spray and have no effect on the larger colony.
New Jersey pest control professionals have access to baits and non-repellent ant control products that are designed to completely eliminate ant colonies. Baits are extremely effective in eliminating ants. Baits attract worker ants as they forage for food to feed the colony. Ants take the poisonous bait back to the nest where it is fed to larvae. After a period of time, the colony collapses and is completely eliminated.
Non-repellent ant control products are also effective in eliminating ant infestations. As ants walk through the pesticide, poison clings to their bodies. When they return to the nest, the poison is passed to other ants during normal feeding and grooming activities, killing the entire colony.
