PAVEMENT ANTS IDENTIFICATION, INFORMATION, AND EXTERMINATION
Seeing ant hills around your property like the one pictured below? You could be dealing with pavement ants. They tend to create and hills just off the perimeter of concrete and asphalt walkways.
Pavement ants are a common species in the United States. They can be identified most easily by their legs and antennae, which are a lighter brown shade than the rest of the body. They can grow to around 2 1/2 to 3 mm in length. These ants have a brown to black coloration.
You see these ones swarming a piece of fruit or other food left behind by humans. As their name implies, pavement ants nest in and around cracks in the pavement.
Appearance:
- Their legs and antennae are a lighter color than the rest of their body, which is dark brown in color.
- The head and thorax are spiny and marked with lines.
- They generally span about a quarter inch in length
PAVEMENT ANT BITES
The worker ants do not bite. They do, however, have the ability to sting with their sharp spines, located on their thorax. Make sure to wear gloves.
They are not aggressive, unlike some other ant species like fire ants. They will more likely avoid you rather than attempting to attack you. They can sting if given no other option.
SIGNS OF INFESTATION AT HOME
As you might have guessed, pavement ants like to live in cracks of the pavement. If you think this relates to the pavement you have at home, you would benefit from having the cracks and crevices in your pavement filled. Filling the cracks will help with more than just ants. Many other types of insects look to reside in these spaces.
Pavement ants invade homes and buildings while looking for food. Nests are found outside under rocks and stone. They can also be found along curbs or in cracks in the pavement. If your backyard has a lot of pavement work, you could be at risk of these ants trying to settle there. Have a local pest control specialist come and assess the situation if your DIY efforts have not made a difference.
There are a few telltale signs of a pavement ant infestation. You will most often see the worker ants out and about. They attack plant life and other food sources.
DIET & HABITS
Pavement ants feed on a variety of food sources. They will happily eat meats, greases, other insects, and seeds, much like other ant species. honeydew, sweets, fruits, and even pet foods can also be part of their diet.
Many of the foods they like to eat coincide with the foods that we eat. Worker ants forage for food and set up trails to food sources that they find around their ant hills. They can enter homes to forage and become a pain when large groups enter the kitchen or garden.
BAITING VS SPRAY REPELLANT FOR ANTS
When choosing a DIY pest control method to take care of your ant issues you should know the difference between sprays and baits.
RESIDUAL SPRAYS
The use of residual sprays will cause stress on the colony and worker ants. The problem here is when you stress ants, they tend to break off and separate into additional colonies. This is called budding.
When this happens, you can end up with a worse problem than you had when you started. Be aware!
ANT BAITING
Using a slow acting bait will help the problem in most cases better than a spray can. When you leave bait for ants, typically they will bring it back to their home to feed the colony. When this happens, you have a chance to take out the entire colony in one foul swoop.
Having them bring the bait back won’t cause them to scatter and create more colonies, it will destroy the ant problem from the inside out.
GET RID OF PAVEMENT ANTS FOR GOOD
Pavement ants are one of the more difficult ants to eradicate due to the sheer number of them that can be found in one place. It’s difficult to annihilate ants of any kind without a trace. Exterminators in Staten Island are standing by for pavement inspections as well as extermination needs as needed.
We can treat areas like your backyard, driveway, front yard, and others where pavers are commonly placed. We have slow acting ant repellant chemicals that will treat the existing problem and safeguard the perimeter of the property moving forward.
Annihilator eX-Termination even offers recurring packages where we will be able to come on a regular basis to safeguard you against pests.
Get in touch with Annihilator eX-Termination today and get rid of ants for good.