If you’re having issues with ants or any other pests, then it’s time to call in a Tulsa exterminator that can help you. While the spring, summer and fall months are the biggest months for dealing with ants, there are still issues with ants in the winter. Ants are a year-round pest. It’s important to keep your home protected from these tiny intruders so that you don’t have to deal with them ever. It is article let’s take a good hard look at ants, their lifecycle, and what you and your Tulsa exterminator can do to stop them from invading your home.
ODOROUS HOUSE ANTS AND TULSA EXTERMINATOR
During the winter months, the most prolific ant that we find in Oklahoma are the odorous house ants. These ants are specifically indoor ants. They will create a colony inside the house, so they have access to the food in your pantry or kitchen. They’re named odorous house ants because if you take one and crushed them, they emit a unique odor. Maybe people describe this odor as a rotten, coconut smell. is there a small black and are very difficult to get rid of once they get in your home.
Odorous house ants reproduce their colony by a process known as splintering. The queen of the colony will emit a pheromone that communicates to its workers. Pheromones are a sensible hormone. They can be sensed by other individuals in the colony. In ant colonies, the workers are all female. This unique pheromone emitted by the queen keeps these worker ants sterile. Your Tulsa exterminator will have more information about this.
SPLINTERING ANTS AND TULSA EXTERMINATOR
Because the worker ants come and go from the colony, they are in contact with this pheromone on a regular basis. If for some reason a group of worker insects find themselves separate from the colony for an extended period of time, the pheromone starts to fade. The first one to regain their reproductive ability will now become a queen, and start to emit her own pheromone. This will keep the other worker ants that are with her sterile, but make them part of a new colony that she is creating.
Because odorous house ants use the process of splintering, it’s important that we use the right techniques when it comes to dealing with these pests. This is why it’s so important to call in a Tulsa exterminator to take care of these ants before they become a problem. If you use an over-the-counter spray against these kinds of ants, you’re most likely going to create barriers that could trap a set of workers in a location separate from their colony. This would cause the process of splintering to happen. Stop splintering with your Tulsa exterminator.
ANT METAMORPHOSIS AND TULSA EXTERMINATOR
If the colony does splinter, then you will have now two colonies as opposed to one. This means two queens reproducing twice as fast creating twice as many ants. In essence by using the wrong spray, you have doubled your problem. Your Tulsa exterminator will have access to non-repellent, pesticides that don’t create barriers in your home. The insects don’t even know that these pesticides are there, and they will walk through these pesticides, and carry them back to the colony wiping out everyone in the colony.
Ants survive by using a complete metamorphosis. This means that they have four stages to their lifecycle. The first stage of their lifecycle is the egg stage. The queen will lay each individual ants egg, one at a time throughout the course of her life. Once this egg hatches, a larva will emerge from the egg. The workers will tend to both the egg and the larva, and the later stages as well, all the way up until the ant becomes an adult. The larva stage is fed by the worker ants and continues to develop as time goes on. Eventually, it must pupate. This is where the ant goes into a cocoon like state word develops do is full adulthood. Once it emerges from the cocoon it will be an adult ant. It will at this point take on the role the it has been assigned in the colony.
ANT CASTES AND TULSA EXTERMINATOR
Being a colony insect, ants divide the work of using a caste system. The workers are the most numerous of the ants. These workers are all sterile females. They are tasked with doing all the menial jobs of the colony. These jobs include taking out the trash, tending to the eggs and young, feeding the other castes, finding food, bringing food back and much more. Your Tulsa exterminator can help.
The second caste in the caste system are the soldiers. These insects are usually a little larger than other ants and are tasked with protecting the colony. If a predator enters a colony or attacks the colony, these ants come to life and go to work. They often have larger heads, mandibles, glands with poison or sticky substance, or many other different protective mechanisms they can use on the offense. They’re very important part of the colony life.
REPRODUCTIVE ANTS AND TULSA EXTERMINATOR
Lastly, we have the reproductive. The queen is the head of this cast. She is tasked with laying all the eggs of the colony. In most cases, the queen will lay eggs from the day she goes reproductive all the way till the day she dies. Included in the reproductive caste are also future reproductives. These are individuals that will become queens and kings in the future.
If you’re having an issue with ants or any other pests, it’s time to call in a Tulsa exterminator that you can trust. Here at TermMax Pest Control, we are the best business when it comes to dealing with ants or any other pests. We service the greater Tulsa area, including Owasso, Turley, Claremore, Catoosa, Coweta, Sand Springs, Prattville, Sapulpa, Broken Arrow, Bixby, Jenks and much more. Call today for a free estimate. We’re here to help!
