The Odorous House Ant…A Yearly Battle

The slightest bit of warmth has brought hoards of pesky odorous house ants to the earth’s surface once again.  They arrive seemingly from nowhere.  Outdoors, massive amounts can be found while homeowners are gardening report Monmouth County, NJ pest control professionals.  Their colonies exist in mulch piles, under slabs of cement, in firewood, in piles of logs, beneath stones, or under sidewalks.

The odorous house ants that come indoors are the more experienced older ant foragers.  They tend to appear out of nowhere and often time in large numbers. Odorous house ant like making their nests within a structure as there is ample places that they can reside with minimal disturbance and typically a plentiful supply of food sources.   These ants will create nesting sites throughout buildings in wall voids, under flooring, behind baseboards, in wood frames, in attic insulation, in crawlspaces, behind cabinets.

The odorous house ant is also called the “sweet ant”.  They likely received their name due to the fact that they like to consume sweets.  The honeydew that aphids create is a favorite food source for the odorous house ant, as well as many other species of insects.  Odorous house ants that exist in the forest do not typically have a large nesting site.  These ants typically have one queen and approximately 100 worker ants in the colony.  In contrast though, odorous house ants that live within a structure, or those that live near homes, often do have extremely large colonies with many different branches of colonies.  In addition, those odorous house ants also tend to have hundreds of queens and millions of workers within one single main colony.

Homeowners have a difficult time eliminating odorous house ants without the help of a professional Monmouth County, NJ pest control professional like Allison Pest Control.


Posted

in

by