How to Get Rid of White Footed Ants
There are a few ways that you can get rid of white footed ants at home yourself. In the beginning stages, this is often enough.
Once they have been able to penetrate and establish themselves, they can become much harder to control and eliminate.
- Keep them out in the first place – Ants usually get into the home through cracks and gaps. By sealing the spaces around doors and windows that may be present, you will greatly reduce the risk of infestation by these and many other pests.
- Treating ant mounds outdoors – Outdoor mounds are pretty simple to remedy. You can drench them with the same concentrate (Talstar) that we use to treat doors and window frames. Using a gallon sprayer is the best method. You need to make sure you use enough liquid so that it permeates all the way down into the earth where the majority of the colony is found.
- Creating a pest barrier around the home – You will want to spray a continuous barrier around the outside of the home. Keeping the barrier about 3 feet high on the sides of the building and 3 feet on the ground from the base will form a high-quality barrier. Using a one-gallon sprayer is highly recommended.
- Baits for white footed ants – As mentioned earlier, baiting is not the best way to take care of a white footed ant problem. They are one of the rare breeds of ant that do not share food. Baiting will eliminate only the population of foragers at best, which is about half. Baiting indoors just to reduce colony size is effective.
White Footed Ants Information, Identification, and Extermination
The White Footed Ant goes by the scientific name Technomyrmex difficilis.
This small insect likes to feed on honeydew and nectar. They are mainly nocturnal and do most of their foraging at night. These ants invade homes in search of food, as most ants and other insects do. Their preferred diet consists mainly of sweet liquids and water. Homes with these food sources leaking outside and easily accessible risk invasion by the white footed ant.
Unlike most other ant species, white-footed ants don’t share food with other ants. The workers lay special eggs that can be eaten by the larvae and non-working adults of the colony to keep them healthy. These eggs are referred to as trophic eggs.
- Since they don’t share food, traditional ant baits and poisons that will wipe out a whole colony will not work. If they do not share food, they will not share the poison either. Can make them a bit tricky to handle.
Threats of White Footed Ants
White footed ants don’t sting and won’t cause structural damage to the home. They are less harmful than some other types of ants and termites. There are much worse types of pests that you can have.
They are simply a nuisance in the way most ants are inside the home. You’d rather not see them.
Contact a professional
Getting in touch with a professional will yield high quality, less costly, and faster results. Get in touch with us today if you are in need of pest control services in Staten Island, Brooklyn, or New Jersey areas.
