How To Identify And Get Rid Of An Ant Infestation In Your Elk Grove Home

When ants invade your home, they may hide in your walls and come out only at night to feed on food sources in your kitchen or pantry. If they are active during the day, they can still hide from your attention if they've made a nest in a pantry wall. The only warning sign you may get is one you may not even realize is related to ants. These tiny insects can cause electrical problems. If the lights go off in your kitchen, you may have an ant infestation. The secret to detecting ants is rolling up your sleeves and searching for ant activity. 

• Use a flashlight to look under appliances. 
• Check cracks and crevices. 
• Look for dirt leaking out of cracks. 
• Check around objects that sit on the floor in your pantry.
• Check in the cabinet underneath your kitchen sink. 

When you find ants, follow their trails. Those ants may lead you back to the entry point they used to invade your home. If they do, you can seal the gap or hole, suck the ants up with a vacuum, and clean surfaces with soapy water to address the problem.

Scout Ants:

Before ants invade your home, you may see one ant every once in a while. That one ant isn't a danger on its own, but, if you don't stop it, you could have trouble. The reason one scout ant can cause trouble is that it will lay down an invisible scent trail if it finds food as it heads back to the nest. The other worker ants can follow this trail to the food and do the same. As the scent of the trail grows, so will the number of ants following the trail into your home. Within a short time, one scout ant can turn into a mob of ants. If this occurs more than once, the ants may create an indoor nest, depending on the species. One helpful tip about scout ants is to take time and consider what ant species you're seeing. If you have carpenter ants in your house, it is likely that you have an indoor nest because they create galleries and nest inside wood. What does a carpenter ant look like?

• Carpenter ants are larger than all other ant pests. Workers are between ¼ and ½ of an inch long.
• Winged carpenter ants are roughly twice the size of the workers and can be ? to over 1 inch long.
• Carpenter ants are entirely black or reddish brown with a dark abdomen.
• In a carpenter ant colony, there are major and minor workers. If you see more than one ant, consider whether or not there is a size difference.

It is a good idea to keep ants out of your home. The way to do this is by applying ant control in your yard and pest-proofing your home. Before we continue on to ant control and prevention, let's quickly look at the health risks.