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Summer time is here. Flowers are in bloom, grass is turning green and the weather is really warming up. With all these changes it is a great time for insects to start breeding, foraging for food and finding new shelter near food sources. One of the most common insects you might find foraging for food in your home around this time a little black ant. They start to appear in your kitchen or bath around the start of summer. You might see one ant at time and think nothing about it. But these ants are foraging for food from a nearby colony with thousands of other ants. If they find your home an easy target for food, they will send out more, and more, and well, you get the idea.
These little black ants are actually their own distinct species of ant. The worker ants can be around 2 mm long and a queen ant can be as large as 5 mm long. They are a shiny black color and females have wings that they shed after they mate. A little black ant’s nest can have more than one queen laying eggs. These ants nest in small soil mounds building their colonies below. They will eat anything from dead insects to a small bread crumb. Queen ants live about one year and her eggs will turn into adult ants in about a month. Worker ants live about 4 months.
Little black ants usually begin matting in swarms in June and can continue through to August. Once a female has mated it will form its own colony and this colony will grow rapidly into thousands of ants too. You can see just how quickly an ant infestation can get out of hand.
Little black ant infestations are common because these ants are very good at hiding in your home. The most common places to find a little black ant are in the kitchen and the bathroom. Kitchens are full of good food to forage for and a great place to find water. Your bathroom also offers the moisture factor and attracts ants to the water sources. This is when you will see the little black ants in your home, when they are foraging for food and needed sourced of water. If a food source is found, they will send out more worker ants until you have a constant line of little black ants heading to your kitchen for a snack.
The best way to keep ants out of your home is to make sure you seal any crack or hole around the exterior of your home. This will help stop the initial threat of them finding a way inside. Also, keep up with taking trash out and clean up any crumbs or spills right away to help keep little black ants from finding food easily in your home. If you’ve already found yourself with an ant infestation, it is unlikely you’ll have success in complete eradication until you call in the pros. DIY ant control is often not effective as the ants just keep coming back until the entire colony is eliminated. To ensure that the little black ant infestation is gone and gone for good, contact your local pest control team.
The good news is that if you have Perimeter Pest Control, Green Choice or Perimeter PLUS Pest Control with All-American and you are experiencing problems with little black ants, simply give us a call. Ants will get inside from time to time despite the best efforts to keep up a barrier around the outside of your home. With these comprehensive programs for pest control, we will come back out for no additional charge as many times as needed to eliminate your ant problem.