Are you having issues with ants or any other insect? It’s time to give your Tulsa pest control company a call. While the busiest times for ants are predominantly in the spring and in the fall, these insects can become a nuisance anytime of the year. In the winter months, we even have odorous house ants that are found inside our homes. As the weather sometimes gets warmer in the Oklahoma winter months, yard ants can come back to life for a brief period. In this article let’s take a good hard look at ants, the lifecycle and what are you and your Tulsa pest control company can do to protect your home from them.
EUSOCIAL ANTS AND TULSA PEST CONTROL
Ants are eusocial insects. That means that they use the caste system in order to divide the work. The largest caste in the system are the workers. The workers are all females. They have the highest number of population. The reason this is, is because they do all of the work of the colony. They build the nest, care for the young, forage for food, bring the food back, feed the other castes in the nest, take out the trash and much more. Essentially anything that needs to be done the worker ants are going to do.
The next caste are the soldier ants. These ants are usually larger in size, and have defensive mechanisms that they can use to protect the nest. They might have large mandibles or glands that can secrete acidic or sticky substances, or any number of other weapons, to protect the colony. If a predator has invaded their colony, the soldiers will come to life and go straight to the fray. Often ant colonies will go on the offense of looking for food. They will raid termite nest or of the nest of other ants in an effort to take the young back and feed on them. Soldiers can be on the front lines of those attacks. Your Tulsa pest control company can help.
REPRODUCTIVE ANTS AND TULSA PEST CONTROL
Lastly, we have the reproductive caste. At the top of this caste is the queen. She will lay all the eggs for the colony. Her job is never ending and very important. Without her, the population necessary to complete all the tasks of the nest would not be able to be done.
Colonies can reproduce themselves in multiple ways. As mentioned before, the odorous house ant is an inside ant. In order to reproduce the colony, this ant will use a process known as splintering. The female queen emits a hormone that tells all of the workers to remain sterile. So if a group of female workers find themselves separated from the queen, then they will be separated from the queen and become reproductive. The first female worker to become reproductive will become the new queen and start producing the pheromone. This will cause these workers to create a brand new colony, separate from the original colony. Some ants will have multiple queens in their colony. As a colony grows larger and larger, I will span more area. In order to keep up the population, it will have to have multiple queens in order to keep its going population
SWARMING ANTS AND TULSA PEST CONTROL
Are there ant colonies will use a Swarmers to reproduce. They will create male and female reproductives with wings. Once a year, these reproductives will leave the nest, searching for a swarm of reproductive ants. As they swarm, the ants will pair up male and female, mate in mid air, and then go search for a place to create a new colony. Once they land, they will lose their wings and start a brand new colony. Your Tulsa pest control company can keep them out of your home.
Ants are very organized. They will usually follow one another in a line. The reason they do this is because they can find the most efficient way to get from the colony to the food source they found. As workers forage for food, they will leave a trail of pheromones. These pheromones are smellable hormones. These pheromone trails can be sensed by the other workers and followed. So once a worker ant comes back with food, the other worker ants will follow the pheromone trail back to the food source. This creates a line and a very efficient way of bringing food back to the colony.
SYMBIOTIC ANTS AND TULSA PEST CONTROL
In many cases, ants can have symbiotic relationships with other insects. Take the leaf cutter ant, for example. This ant will go out and cut pieces of leaves off of trees and shrubs. It will carry these huge leaves back to their nest where it has a farm inside the nest. Then inside this farm, it has a fungus that it will feed the leaves too. This fungus feeds off of the leaves and produce a sweet substance that the leaf cutter ants can feed off of. Call your Tulsa pest control company for more information.
There are other ants that will actually herd other insects. Aphids secrete a substance known as honeydew that is very valuable to many small insect such as ants. Ants will also feed and protect them and their honeydew in order to survive. So the ants will protect a group of aphids and herd them in order to have access to their supply of honeydew. Ants are a pretty smart insect.
If you’re having an issue with ants or any other pests, maybe its time to call in a Tulsa pest control company 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 pets. We service a greater Tulsa area, including Broken Arrow, Sand Springs, Bixby, Owasso, Jenks, Turley, Sapulpa, Coweta, Prattville, Catoosa, Claremore and much more. Call today for a free estimate. We’re here to help!