If ants have gotten into food stored in your pantry, such as bags of sugar or boxes of cereal, discard them immediately. Even if you can’t see or smell them, the ants can. Remove liner paper from kitchen cabinets and pantry shelves, which may have accumulated crumbs and spills from food sources.Keep garbage pails and recycling bins outdoors if the ants return.Some scents are unappealing to ants and will turn them away, too. A good household floor cleaner with a strong scent, such as a pine or citrus-scented cleaner, not only removes food particles that ants feed upon but also disrupts their ability to find the food through scent. Wash garbage pails and recycling bins with warm, soapy water.In addition to these steps, the following actions may also reduce the number of ants in your home, making it easier for natural ant killers to work on the remaining pests: Most ants prefer to nest outdoors, traveling into homes to seek food. Look around the baseboards, doors and windows to find where the ants are getting into your home, then seal these areas. Keep your kitchen and food preparation areas, including the sink and sink trap, as clean as possible. How to get rid of ants naturally The most common areas to find ants include:īefore reaching for the traps, sprays or natural ant killers, it’s important to make your home as unappealing to ants as possible. To get rid of ants naturally, you need to first remove any potential food sources. Many homeowners find termite wings before they actually see termites. Termites’ wings are equal in size, and termites tend to shed their wings continually. Winged ants have a narrow waist and hind wings shorter than the front wings. If you see insects flying around your home, and you aren’t sure if they are termites or ants, try catching one and looking at it under a magnifying glass. Flying ants and termites do look similar from a distance. A few species, such as carpenter ants, nest inside wood and can weaken beams and wooden structures from their tunneling activities.Īnts are often mistaken for termites. Most ants live outdoors and simply find an easy entrance point into a home where food and water are abundant. Once you see ants inside your home, chances are good that they have set up nearby. Ants seek food and water sources, marking their trails using scent chemicals to guide other ants from their colony to a good supply source. She prepares the colony and sheds her wings, then produces eggs to set up housekeeping in the new colony.Īn ant can lift 20 times its body weight. After mating, the queen seeks a suitable nest site. When it is time to reproduce, swarms of winged ants emerge from the colony. One queen ant can live for a year or more and produce millions of offspring during that time. The male ant’s sole purpose in life is to mate with the queen and produce any larvae. Winged ants are actually males, which are produced when the colony needs more ants. Most ant colonies have one queen, with thousands of sterile female worker ants. Ants are social insects, living in large groups called colonies. Looking for a natural ant killer? Safer ® Brand has the solution » Know Your Enemy: All About AntsĪpproximately 12,000 species of ants colonize the world, with only a handful of species making a nuisance of themselves in the average home. It’s simply a sign of ants’ tenacity and survival instincts helping them adapt to the modern age. If you see ants in your home, it’s not a sign of a dirty home. Ants are one of the most common household pests in the United States.
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