Your Tulsa exterminator can eliminate ants from in and around your home. The spring months are upon us and ant season is here. It’s a time, when ant colonies that have been dormant for the entire winter suddenly come to life in an effort to grow and develop as a colony. One of the first lines of business for the ant colony is the send out scouts and start finding new sources of food that they will need to supply them through out the summer months. So in this article, let us take a good hard look at ants, their life cycle, and what you and your Tulsa exterminator can do to protect yourself and your home.
ANT LIFE CYCLE AND TULSA EXTERMINATOR
Ants use a complete lifecycle in order to develop. In colony life, their main directive is to reproduce themselves. The queen will lay eggs all day in order to populate her colony. These eggs will be tended to by the workers. The eggs will hatch in a larva form that will be fed by the worker ants. This larva form will continue to develop until it gets to the point that it’s ready to pupate. This is when the ant will be in a cocoon like structure in order to develop into a full grown adult ant. Once it hatches, it will now begin to take up its work as part of the colony. It may be a worker ant, a soldier ant, or another reproductive.
Ants determine what they will be by the use of pheromones. Pheromones are hormones that can be sensed between multiple ants. These hormones are the main form of communication between ants. In the larva form, ants will apply certain pheromones to their larva in order to determine its role in the colony. These hormones are used to communicate many different things between the ants. They use it for navigation, food, foraging and recovery, danger, and so many other things. Contact your Tulsa exterminator for help with ants.
FORAGING FOR FOOD
Ants use a very unique process to forage for food. These pheromones are dropped by the worker, and as it goes out from the colony looking for food. Ants will fan out and go all sorts of different directions in an effort to find food. The scouts will eventually find food and take a piece of it back with them. They’ll follow their own pheromone scent back to the colony. Other workers will see that that this ant has found food and follow its pheromone to the food source.
In some cases, another ant will find the same food source. One of them will take a longer route. Every time that an ant follows that route, it will leave its own pheromone trail on top of the trail that was there before. Because the shorter trail will be able to be traveled many more times than the longer one, that pheromone trail will start to get stronger than the other one. The longer pheromone trail will eventually fade out, and the ants will begin to only use the strong shorter pheromone trail.
In danger situations, pheromones are omitted to alert the soldiers that it’s time to jump to life. If there’s invader in the colony, the soldiers will come straight in and attack in an attempt to defend their colony. They often will have strong mandibles, large heads, glands with sticky or acidic substances that they can emit and very strong and powerful legs and bodies. In some species, the soldiers are much larger than the regular ants. They will fight for their life in order to protect the colony. Contact your Tulsa exterminator for help with ants.
YARD ANTS AND TULSA EXTERMINATOR
There are many different kinds of ants in our yards. Most of them are harmless and mind their own business. But some of them can be a nuisance. For instance, the fire ant is a problem in many peoples yards. This small red ant has a very painful bite. If you knock over it’s mound, or even just stand near it, many times these insects we mobilize to attack. If you’ve ever found yourself in this position, you know the pain that they can cause. An army of these ants will come out and start biting at your ankles or any part they can get to where there is skin. In order to get rid of these, your Tulsa exterminator will have the proper chemicals to deal with these kinds of ants.
Indoor ants can be a problem as well. In northeast Oklahoma we have the odorous house ant. It has such a name because if you take one of these ants and crush it, it has a very distinct odor much like a rotten coconut. These ants will actually make a nest inside your house, not just scout your house for food. They can be in your home year-round and active the entire time.
ELIMINATING ANTS AND TULSA EXTERMINATOR
If you go to the grocery store and pick up a can of pesticide, you will cause the problem to get worse. These insects multiply by splintering. In other words, if a group of ants get separated from the main group, they will start their own colony. So if you use a repellent spray, you could separate a group of ants from the colony creating two colonies in the place of one. Your Tulsa exterminator will have the proper pesticides to deal with these insects.
If you’re having an issue with ants or any other pests, then it’s time to contact your Tulsa exterminator. Here at TermMax pest control, we are the best in the business when it comes to dealing with ants or any other pests. We service agree to Tulsa area, including Owasso, Turley, Coweta, Sand Springs, Claremore, Catoosa, Jenks, Bixby, Prattville, Sapulpa, and so much more. Call today for free estimate. We’re here to help! Help!
