Natural Means of Doing Pest Control Can Help You In Both Ways Against Carpenter Ants

Aug 28
10:21

2015

Ma. Theresa Galan

Ma. Theresa Galan

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Finding the most effective treatment for ants depends on the specific type you have invading your house. When you're dealing with ants in your house, detective work is an integral part of eradicating them, but there's actually much more to it.

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They will typically live outdoors very close to the house,Natural Means of Doing Pest Control Can Help You In Both Ways Against Carpenter Ants  Articles and eventually enter your house in search of food and water.

Carpenter ants are commonly found around homes in wooded areas. They don't carry bait back to their nests, so you have to kill them at the source. This means you have to do a little detective work to find the nest(s). Don't bother using the borax/sugar bait – they'll just feed on it like little piggies at a trough.

How to find the nest

Carpenter ants live in wood and tunnel through it. The best clue to look for is small piles of very fine sawdust – the remains of the wood they have chewed through. You will typically find carpenter ant nests in moist wood in foundations, decks, wood piles near your house, trees, gaps between boards, etc.

If you take some time to figure out where ants are entering the house, you can usually track them back to a nest. It's easiest if you kill all the ants in sight, then watch for new ants to appear to determine their general entry point. This may give clues to holes that need to be sealed up, rotting foundation where they're living, or cracks under doors they're traveling under.

Natural carpenter ant remedy

The best natural remedy we have found for eradicating carpenter ants isDiatomaceous Earth (DE). DE is completely natural and organic. It is made from tiny skeletal remains of algae-like plants.

DE is a lethal dust for insects. Its microscopic razor sharp edges will cut through the body of insects, drying them out and killing them. If ingested by carpenter ants, it will shred their insides. There are different types of DE, so keep in mindyou must get food grade DE for pest control

Food grade DE is completely safe to be used around kids and pets and can be sprinkled around the home and yard without posing a threat.

In order to get rid of a colony of carpenter ants, DE must be injected directly into the nest. We used a medicine dropper to squirt dry DE into cracks where we found them nesting.

If the nest cannot be located, bait food with a combination of 1% boric acid and 10% sugar water. Worker ants eat the baited food and share it with the rest of the colony through regurgitation. This is a slow process and could take weeks to months. Do not put insecticide directly on the food because it will kill the worker ants before they return and share the food with the colony.

If the nest is behind a wall, the boric acid can be sprayed through the electrical outlet into the wall void. Ants travel along electrical wires and will be exposed to the boric acid. 

Professional exterminators are the most reliable source for getting rid of carpenter ants because they have insecticides that are not available to the public. However, if you would rather tackle the problem yourself, understand that there is no easy way to get rid of carpenter ants.

Refer to Auckland Pest Control, for reliable assistance the you need