Ants are fascinating, hard-working creatures with interesting distinctions between species and can carry over 10 times their own body weight. Some ants even have their own underground gardens where they cultivate and grow their own food. While ants are amazing to study, some ants in Leander, TX can make mounds in your yard and can bite like the dickens. Ants can be appreciated from afar, but living with them, whether inside your home or out, is not so desirable. Eradicating an ant problem on your lawn or in your kitchen can be pretty tricky and can even spread the ants to a wider area instead of eliminating them. Calling a professional pest control company to treat your Leander home and yard is the best way to get rid of those tiny, marching insects, so you don’t have to worry about them walking off with your slice of watermelon this summer.

Prevention and Treatment Inside the Home

Seeing a bug occasionally in your Leander home is not usually cause for alarm. But because ants send out a pheromone trail for other ants to follow, the chances of you only ever seeing one ant in your house is quite unlikely. If they find something that strikes their fancy, they will soon set up a trail along your baseboards or right across the wall to your sticky jar of honey, or other crumbs that they find irresistible. To prevent ants from entering your home in the first place,

• Wipe down your tables and counters with an all-purpose cleaner
• Keep floors and surfaces free from crumbs, and, especially, sticky spots from surgery drink spills or honey.
• Caulk around windows and door frames. Ants can enter through tiny cracks so checking for small entry points will help keep ants from coming in.

If you find ants in your home, identifying whether or not they are relatively harmless to the structure of your house or if they can cause damage is crucial. Carpenter ants are larger than your average ant and the worker ants have wings.

You also want to be sure the insects you see are not termites, which could entail a different method of eradication.

• Ants have a wasp-like or pinched waist while termites' bodies go straight back from their heads
• Ant wings have two sets with the top set longer than the bottom. Termites have two sets of wings but both sets are similar in size.
• Ants have bent or elbowed antennae while termites’ antennae are straight.

Trying over-the-counter ant bait inside the home or spraying pesticides on ant colonies found outside the home, if you believe it is the source of your indoor ant problem, can be effective. Though in many cases, this treatment can take a few days to weeks before you see signs of eradication. If you are dealing with the destructive carpenter ants, or simply want to make sure the ants are firmly stopped from entering your home, call a professional ant exterminator. For those wanting a green pest control option in Leander, TX, call DM Pest Control today!