How to make sure Northern California ants don’t ‘set up a colony in your kitchen drawer’
If the teeny-tiny critters haven’t marched into your home yet, they very well could as temperatures continue to heat up across Northern California.
Ants are persistent. Ants are a nuisance. Ants are a pain to get rid of.
The Bee consulted insect expert Dr. Lynn Kimsey with UC Davis Bohart Museum of Entomology, home to the seventh largest insect collection in North America, to learn how to vanquish one of the most common household pests for good:
Why do ants enter homes?
Ants enter homes in search of three things: food, water and shelter.
Native species, when kept outside, help bring water and oxygen to plant roots, according to The Harvard Forest. California’s most common ant species — Argentine, pavement and pharaoh — are exotic.
Kimsey said certain ants are looking for reliable wet indoor conditions. Garbage and pet food left out for an extended period of time could also attract a zealous trail of industrious pests.
Once the bugs are in your home, sweets keep them around.
“Ants, they’re pretty good at detecting the odor of food,” she said.
The over-ripened banana that’s been chilling on your counter for days or the bottle of honey you forgot to wipe clean before storing it away are just two of many sugary attractions.
But the insects aren’t picky. Most types of food will do.
“[Pharaohs] could set up a colony in a kitchen drawer,” Kimsey said.
How do I get rid of ants inside my home?
If you ever struggled to rid your home of a determined group of ants, they were probably from an Argentine or pharaoh colony.
Here’s the problem: Argentine ants are difficult to demolish because the colonies exist below ground.
According to the UC Riverside Center for Invasive Species Research, the six-legged insects exist in backyards within potted plants and both brick and stone walkways.
They sliver their way into buildings through cracks and other spaces.
There’s a theory, Kimsey said, that all Arginine ants in the U.S. are related to the original queen introduced. Meaning, the colonies can “build up to really enormous populations” with as many as 20 queens in them.
“Which is actually absolutely, totally unusual for ants or any other social insects,” she said.
According to the U.S. Department of Food and Agriculture, the species is a high infestation risk because the queens can outlive other species.
Workers can live up to one year.
“You could kill half a colony, Kimsey said, it would have absolutely no impact because you still have queens that are laying eggs and producing babies.”
Even worse: The reddish-yellow color pharaoh ants prefer the indoors, especially hospitals where they can feed on injury wounds.
According to the UC Riverside Center for Invasive Species Research, your best line of defense to riding your home of ants includes:
Sanitize - Trash food scraps
Locate the gaps - Close entry points
Remove landscaping -Trash excesses water sources
Control - Use insecticides or poison bait stations
Kimsey said the recipe to poison bait traps is between 30% to 40% sugar and 7% boric acid. The ants collect the mixture and take it back to feed to their queen.
The colony could die shortly after.
Insecticides are more of a repellent than a toxin and may “work better” than poison because it’s not likely to hurt humans or pets.
Natural home remedies like essential oils, “smell nice but that’s pretty much it,” Kimsey said.
The compounds within the oil are just as toxic as insecticides when dispensed in large doses, so you may not “get too far with that.”
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