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3 Pests That Can Ruin Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is a holiday that family and friends gather together to share a meal and relax without worrying about the world. This year, it is exponentially more important for those who do get to spend time with family and friends to stay healthy, safe, and of course— well fed. Unfortunately, the increased amount of food and foot traffic in your home won’t just attract more humans, but pests as well. Here are a few critters that will make you wish you socially distanced this year.

Mice

Mice are always searching for food and shelter, especially when the cold weather arrives. Ensure that your house is free of any visible holes or cracks that grant entrance to these animals. Remember, mice only require holes the size of dimes to squeeze through! The scents emitting from your home during this week will attract mice, which is why you should also make sure that you adequately dispose of all food scraps. Use scented garbage bags and place all trash outside in sealed containers.

Bed Bugs

Spending time with those you love is what makes Thanksgiving such a special day. However, if you’re staying over at someone’s house for the holiday, make sure you inspect your room for bed bugs. Check the mattress, bed frame, carpeting, linens, et cetera., and make sure you place your bag on a desk or nightstand. Since bed bugs don’t discriminate whom they infest — no matter how clean they might be.

Ants

Bringing plates of food to and from the kitchen to the dining room will obviously result in a spill or two. Even just a rogue piece of stuffing in the corner of the kitchen can be an ant magnet. All it takes is for a single ant to discover a food source— from there, the colony will be quickly alerted thanks to pheromones. To avoid this, make sure your post-meal cleaning is swift and thorough.

When Thanksgiving arrives this week, your only worry should be spending quality time with those you love, not executive orders or a virus, and especially not about pests. If you fear your home may have a problem with pests (does not pertain to family members), contact Hogarth’s Pest Control.

 

Carpenter Ants

This year we have seen a significant uptick in calls regarding large, black ants spotted around properties. These are carpenter ants, and they can become quite the nuisance if not properly treated. Swarming and flying carpenter ants are often mistaken for termites. It. is important to note that termites are somewhat uncommon in Northern Michigan and it is almost always carpenter ants that clients are finding.

Identifying Carpenter Ants

Carpenter ants are one of the largest species of ant. They can be as small as 1/16 of an inch and quickly grow to 1/2 inch. Queens are significantly larger and can easily grow up to an inch in size.

These ants can be found in the home and swarm towards windows to get out. Swarmers, as we like to call them, are the reproductive ants. They attempt to access the outside to produce satellite nests. After approximately a week they can exhaust themselves trying to get outside and die. There is no treatment to get rid of the swarming and flying carpenter ants, however, this indicates that there is a working nest in your home or structure that does need to be treated by a pest control professional.

Can they bite?

Carpenter ants can bite on contact, however, they are not venomous. They prefer to eat things with protein and sugar, including honeydew, jelly, and meats they come across within the home. Carpenter ants can travel up to 1,000 ft. away from their colony to forage their food, and depending on the weather, can be seen both inside or outside the home. On nice sunny days, typically from late March to mid-June, nests can be “woken up” and the ants may suddenly start appearing in and around your home looking for food.

Homeowners can do their own inspection to identify a carpenter ant issue. Carps are typically the most active in the afternoons on warm, sunny days. It is easy to find the ants the outside corners of your homes. If you identify a carpenter ant infestation, it is very important to have Hogarth’s Pest Control treat the issue. Carpenter ants can cause an extensive amount of structural damage to your home by chewing and destroying wood, similar to termites. Clients sometimes go years without realizing they have a carpenter ant nest.

Treating for Carpenter Ants

If carpenter ants become overwhelming, you may wash the countertops or use over-the-counter gel baits. DO NOT SPRAY OR USE GRANULES under any circumstances. If you had previously had another company treat or if you used any type of over-the-counter spray or granule, it will affect the outcome and how long it can take for our treatment to work. Gel baits can help to kill off some of the ants for the time being, but sprays and granules may only make the situation worse. Carpenter ants are EXTREMELY smart and can tell when their fellow ants are dying off. Carpenter ants can detect when a product has been put down and may avoid the area altogether.

They may work to avoid being seen by moving outside or relocating their nest. Gel baits will not kill off the nest. Hogarth’s Pest Control uses an un-detectable product that works by using the ants to take the product from outside to the nest itself, killing off the nest and the colony within 14-21 days of treatment. Once the carpenter ants have been treated for and the nest has been killed off, Hogarth’s can do an exterior preventative spray for all crawling insects, bees, wasps, and hornets. It is important to know that these are two different treatments and must be done at separate times.

Discovering A Nest

Occasionally, clients are unaware that they have carpenter ants until after their yearly spring treatment has been done. A typical exterior preventative treatment works to keep all crawling insects, bees, wasps, and hornets from getting inside the structure. However, this can trap carpenter ants inside the walls if not identified before-hand. If this is the case, Hogarth’s will need to do an interior ant treatment to rid your home of the ants. The interior treatment is non-invasive; we treat the baseboards, cracks, and crevices.

Within the 21 days after treating for carpenter ants, it’s extremely important not to kill the ants as you see them. It is imperative for the ants to cross the product and transfer it back to the nest. Hogarth’s Pest Control guarantees your home to be ant-free until the snow flies in the fall, however, they can return to the structure in the following spring. It is very important to have Hogarth’s do a preventative spray every spring to avoid re-infestation.

Avoiding Carpenter Ant Infestations

Carpenter ants seek out moisture and food. The homeowner can prevent infestations by correcting moisture problems and trimming tree branches to avoid touching the roof. Be sure to clean gutters regularly to avoid water run-off onto decking and other parts of the structure.

If you suspect a carpenter ant issue, be sure to consult Hogarth’s Pest Control for professional treatment and to avoid re-infestation.

What’s That Smell?

Have you ever noticed tiny ants congregating on a droplet of melted ice cream that has fallen to the ground? Those tiny ants are known as ‘sweet ants’ or ‘sugar ants’ because their affinity for all things saccharine. The technical name for these ants is the ‘odorous house’ ant, and they are most commonly found in the kitchen snacking on sugary substances. These ants won’t cause any damage to the home, unlike carpenter ants and acrobats ants, but they are a nuisance insect that licensed pest control professionals can eradicate.

How To Identify

The odorous house ant does not get its name from a foul smell, per se. For instance, if you have discovered a trail of ants in your home, you will not notice any odor emitted. To an untrained eye, the species of ant does not have any physical traits that set them apart from others right away.  They do look similar to pavement ants, but their bodies only have one node as opposed to two. Due to their size, this can be difficult to distinguish at first glance.

To properly identify an odorous house ant (this is actually something we pest control professionals always do), you can crush one between your thumb and index finger. If the crushed ant smells like coconut, then you know for certain that it is an odorous house ant! You read that right, the odorous house ants smell shockingly similar to rotting coconuts. This scent is actually a chemical compound that is very similar to those emitted by rotting food— more specifically, the penicillin mold that causes food to rot.

Diet

Odorous house ants particularly enjoy carbohydrate-rich materials, such as plant nectar, honeydew from aphids, and sweet human foods.  As a result, these ants tend to invite themselves to picnics and into kitchens.  However, their saccharine-loving ways can also lead them to their demise; in most cases, odorous house ants respond well to sugar-based baits if they do find their way in to your kitchen.

Odorous house ant will essentially nest anywhere. They create large colonies that usually split into sub-colonies, often making them difficult to control and eliminate.  If you notice odorous house ants in your home, it is important that you do not attempt to self-treat. Many store-bought products will simply deter the ants, which forces them to take an alternative route. This only displaces the ants rather than eliminating them.

Many forms of self-treating often affect large quantities of ants at once; however, they do not affect the rest of the ants living in the colony. If your DIY fast-acting spray kills the first, unsuspecting victims that it touches, the other ants will take notice to the spike in mortality rate and re-route to a new food source. This food source will always be near water; in kitchens, bathrooms, and laundry rooms.

Takeaway Tips:

  • To identify an odorous house ant, squash the ant between your fingers; it should smell like coconut.
  • We advise that customers DO NOT attempt to spray or treat odorous house ants with store-bought products. Spraying will cause budding and make the problem much worse and harder to deal with.

The key to eliminating an odorous house ant colony is a professional pest control treatment. If you have been noticing ants inside of your home, don’t hesitate to reach out. We have been eliminating issues with these ants for 25 years, so give us a call today!

Sources

Liesch, P. “Identifying Insects by Smell, Part 2: Odorous House Ants.” Insect Diagnostic Lab, UW Madison Department of Entomology, 24 Apr. 2019, labs.russell.wisc.edu/insectlab/2019/04/24/identifying-insects-by-smell-part-2-odorous-house-ants/.

The Ants Go Marching

Carpenter ants. You’ve seen them— the black, oversized bodies with pinchers on their faces. Aptly named after their nest building, carpenter ants burrow smooth tunnels in wood and are commonly referred to as the “Michigan termite”.  Rather than eating the wood, they excavate to make their nests. This poses a threat for property owners if they gain access to a structure. Early detection is key! Unlike the termite, it takes years for their destruction to cause significant structural damage; however, it is still important to remain proactive in the prevention of an infestation.

But what do they do?

Carpenter ants attack wood that has been damaged by mold or water. While they begin with the weakened wood, they move deeper and can easily burrow in the dry, undamaged wood. In the wild, these ants make their homes in fallen trees, hollowed-out stumps, rotting fence posts, and under logs/lumber. However, water damaged wood around a structure or home is also alluring to carpenter ants. Homeowners will commonly find an infestation in areas that have experienced flooding such as kitchens and bathrooms. These ants gain access to structures through the damaged areas; as well as through cracks around doors, windows, plumbing, and electrical holes.  If there are tree branches or electrical wires touching the structure, they can use those as a means to enter as well. Once inside, they begin to build their colonies.

The parent colony houses the queen, eggs, and young. Satellite colonies may branch off from the main but only once the parent colony is mature, which can take years. The workers and winged ants emerge from the pupae in the late summer months and begin mating flights. This process is called swarming and can be quite a disturbance for homeowners as it is a sign of an infestation. In some cases however, a homeowner may become aware of an infestation by hearing a rustling in the walls. Other signs of an infestation in the home include finding sawdust piles around the home, or seeing small holes in wood.

Carpenter ants are most active during dusk and dawn, though they can be seen out in broad daylight. They feed on plant and fruit juices as well as insects and other arthropods and will forage for food up to 700 feet from their nest in the wild. In the home, they enjoy kitchen grease, meats, sweets, and eggs.

Tips to prevent

  • Proper identification is key!
  • Trim branches and bushes from structure.
  • Be sure to fix and replace any water-damaged wood
  • Have an exterior preventative treatment applied to your structure. The best time to do is in the spring; however, if you have an infestation you should get treated by a professional immediately.
  • Keep food stored in airtight containers

If you believe to have found a carpenter ant in your home or structure, it is important to call a licensed pest control professional. While carpenter ant damage is slow-moving, these pests are best dealt with sooner than later. The first line of self defense a homeowner with an assumed infestation turns to is typically self-treating with store bought pyrethrin pesticides such as Ortho® Home Defense®. While this may seem to alleviate the issue, it will only kill the ants being seen and drive more ants inside the home! To eradicate a colony, the queen must be killed and store bought pesticides will simply not do the job. The best course of action is to work with a pest control professional to ensure proper and lasting eradication. Not only will a professional rid your home of ants, but they will also provide you with tips and additional services to prevent re-entry.

Hogarth’s Pest Control & Wildlife Removal specializes in these types of jobs and the exclusion work required to prevent it from happening again. We work with you on creating a program best-suited to your needs. Hogarth’s Pest Control & Wildlife Removal has been eradicating carpenter ant colonies in Northern Michigan for over 25 years, and we do not stop until the job is done!

Understanding Carpenter Ants

Identifying Carpenter Ants

Carpenter ants are one of the largest types of ants and are usually fairly easy to identify. They can start as small as 1/16 of an inch and quickly grow to a 1/2 inch in size. The queen is much larger and can easily grow up to an inch in size. Swarming and flying carpenter ants are often mistaken for termites. Termites are somewhat uncommon in Northern Michigan and it is almost always carpenter ants that clients are finding.

They can be found in the home and swarm towards windows to get out. Swarmers, as we like to call them, are the reproductive ants. They attempt to access the outside to produce satellite nests. After approximately a week they can exhaust themselves trying to get outside and die. There is no treatment to get ride of the swarming and flying carpenter ants, however this indicates that there is a working nest in your home or structure that does need to be treated by a pest control professional.

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Will They Harm Me?

Carpenter ants can bite on contact, however they are not venomous. They prefer to eat things with protein and sugar, including honeydew, jelly, and meats they come across within the home. Carpenter ants can travel up to 1,000 ft. away from their colony to forage their food, and depending on the weather, can be seen both inside or outside the home. On nice sunny days, typically from late March to mid-June, carpenter ants nests can be “woken up” and the ants may suddenly start appearing in and around your home looking for food.

Homeowners can do their own inspection to identify a carpenter ant issue. Carps are typically the most active in the afternoons on warm, sunny days. It is easy to find the ants the outside corners of your homes. If you identify a carpenter ant infestation, it is very important to have Hogarth’s Pest Control treat the issue. Carpenter ants can cause an extensive amount of structural damage to your home by chewing and destroying wood, similar to termites. Clients sometimes go years without realizing they have a carpenter ant nest.

Treating for Carpenter Ants

If carpenter ants become overwhelming, you may wash the countertops or use over-the-counter gel baits. DO NOT SPRAY OR USE GRANULES under any circumstances. If you had previously had another company treat or if you used any type of over-the-counter spray or granule, it will effect the outcome and how long it can take for our treatment to work. Gel baits can help to kill off some of the ants for the time being, but sprays and granules may only make the situation worse. Carpenter ants are EXTREMELY smart and can tell when their fellow ants are dying off. Carpenter ants can detect when a product has been put down and may avoid the area all together.

They may work to avoid being seen by moving outside or relocating their nest. Gel baits will not kill off the nest. Hogarth’s Pest Control uses an un-detectable product that works by using the ants to take the product from outside to the nest itself, killing off the nest and the colony within 14-21 days of treatment. Once the carpenter ants have been treated for and the nest has been killed off, Hogarth’s can do an exterior preventative spray for all crawling insects, bees, wasps, and hornets. It is important to know that these are two different treatments and must be done at separate times.

carpenter-ant
Carpenter Ant with wings

Discovering A Nest

Occasionally, clients are unaware that they have carpenter ants until after their yearly spring treatment has been done. A typical exterior preventative treatment works to keep all crawling insects, bees, wasps, and hornets from getting inside the structure. However, this can trap carpenter ants inside the walls if not identified before-hand. If this is the case, Hogarth’s will need to do an interior ant treatment to rid your home of the ants. The interior treatment is non-invasive; we treat the baseboards, cracks and crevices.

Within the 21 days after treating for carpenter ants, it’s extremely important not to kill the ants as you see them. It is imperative for the ants to cross the product and transfer it back to the nest. Hogarth’s Pest Control guarantees your home to be carpenter ant free until the snow flies in the fall, however they can return to the structure in the following spring. It is very important to have Hogarth’s do a preventative spray every spring to avoid re-infestation.

Avoiding Carpenter Ant Infestations

Carpenter ants seek out moisture and food. The homeowner can prevent against carpenter ant infestations by correcting moisture problems and trimming tree branches to avoid touching the roof. Be sure to clean gutters regularly to avoid water run-off onto decking and other parts of the structure.

If you suspect a carpenter ant issue, be sure to consult Hogarth’s Pest Control for a professional treatment and to avoid re-infestation.