If you’re having an issue with ants or any other pests, then it’s time to contact your Broken Arrow exterminator for help. Ants are a small colony insect that we find in our yards and homes. These insects can be very important to our ecosystem, but also find themselves as pests if they go to the wrong places. They can eat our food. They can live in our homes and they can attack us, or our loved ones in the right situations. So in this article, let’s take a good heart look at ants, their lifecycle of what you and your Broken Arrow exterminator can do to stop them from invading your home.
ANT LIFE CYCLE, AND BROKEN ARROW EXTERMINATOR
Ants are a colony insect. They develop using a complete metamorphosis. This means that the queen will lay an egg. That egg will hatch as a larva. The workers will feed the larva until it grows to the point in which it will pupate. At the pupa stage, it will cocoon itself, and develop into its full grown adulthood. Once it hatches as an adult, then it will be a functioning part of ant society.
As an adult ant, these ants will take up their work, depending on what caste they are in. Ants are extensive users of pheromones. Pheromones are smellable hormones. They communicate all sorts of different things. The eggs and larva will be treated with these pheromones to communicate to them what caste they will eventually develop into. Whether it be worker, soldier or reproductive, these ants will find their calling in their young adolescence.
In addition to using pheromones for caste recruitment, they will also use them to find a way to and from food. As a worker ant forages for food, will leave a trail of pheromones behind it. They will bring the food back by following the trail back to the colony. Other ants will follow the pheromone trail back to that food carrying it back-and-forth. Each ant will leave more pheromone with each pass, making that trail even stronger.
ANT CASTES AND BROKEN ARROW EXTERMINATOR
As stated before, there are three castes in the ant colony. We have workers, soldiers, and reproductives. The reproductives are headed up by the queen. This larger female will lay all the eggs for the colony. Her job is to maintain the population, so the colony work can be completed. The soldiers are the protective part of the colony. They’re usually equipped with larger body parts, powerful mandibles, and glands that can secrete all sorts of defensive sort of weapons. Soldiers can be used to protect the colony, and they are also often used to perform raiding parties on other insects or other ant colonies.
Lastly, the worker caste is the most numerous of all the castes. The majority of the population will fall into this group. These female insects will do all the menial jobs of the colony. They will forge for food; they will bring their food back; they will feed the soldiers, larvae and reproductives; they will take out the trash, and anything else is necessary to keep the colony going, and doing what it needs to do. If you see ants coming out of an ant hill, in all likelihood, what you’re seeing are workers. Contact your Broken Arrow exterminator for help with these insects.
ANT COLONY REPRODUCTION AND BROKEN ARROW EXTERMINATOR
While the queen handles all the reproduction within the colony, often the colony will reproduce itself. This can happen in number of different ways. One common way is through the use of swarmers. These are winged ants that will leave the colony in search of a mate. These reproductive’s will find a mate from another colony in a swarm of flying ants. When they find a suitable mate, they will mate in mid air, land somewhere, and start a new colony. The female ant swarmer will become the new queen.
Another way, that ant colonies can reproduce is through splintering. In these colonies, the queen will emit a pheromone the communicates to all the female workers that they should remain sterile. As female workers make their way back to the colony within a certain amount of time, the pheromone will continue to keep them from becoming reproductive. But if a group of ants gets separated from the main colony, and don’t get back to the queen in time, then one of those ants will become reproductive. When she does, she will become the queen of a new colony that she will create using the workers that are with her. In this way, the colony splintered off creating a second new colony. Contact your Broken Arrow exterminator for help with these kinds of ants.
ANT ELIMINATION AND BROKEN ARROW EXTERMINATOR
In most cases when people have problems with ants, they will go straight to the hardware store and get an over the counter solution. While these pesticides may kill initially when you spray and ant directly, they are ineffective at eliminating colonies. Colonies are always hidden somewhere safely tucked away. While killing a few workers or scouts may stop this initial attack, the main part of the problem is still somewhere in your wall or in your yard.
And in the worst situation, you can cause a set of workers to be separated from their colony, and they could splinter off making a brand new colony in your home. Now you’ve doubled your problem by creating two colonies instead of one. Because of this, the best solution is to contact your Broken Arrow exterminator. They have special pesticides that are useful, not only for getting rid of the attacking workers, but also to eliminate the colony at its source.
If you’re having an issue with the ant or any other pests, then you should call a Broken Arrow exterminator that you can trust. 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 the greater Tulsa area, including Broken Arrow, Bixby, Owasso, Jenks, Turley, Coweta, Claremore, Catoosa, Prattville, Sapulpa, Sand Springs and so much more. Call today for a free estimate. We’re here to help!