Ant Control Sydney – How to get rid of ants
Outside demo: How to apply ant bait outside
No more ants. Shows the effects of ant baiting
Pest ant species may have colonies made up of one nest (“monodomous” or “single nest”) or many nests (“polydomous” or “multi nest”) and travel over large distances to get to your home in search of food. Sometimes a colony may consist of hundreds of nests over a large area, a so-called “super colony”. Even the cleanest of homes can provide a ready food source for ants which once found can invade in large numbers, such that professional help is required.
“Often seen as more of a nuisance than a threat, ants are often disregarded even though they can be easily dealt with when you have the advice of a professional.” – Bruce Gow
Ants Inside Tree Bark
There are various types of ants that are often classified as follows:
Protein and Oil Feeding Ants
Protein Feeding Ant Articles (coming soon)
Ant Pest Control Methods
Identification of the particular species of ant is vital to implementing a control program.
Some DYI products help reduce populations, but may end up making control much more difficult in the long term. The last thing that you would want to do is to repel them by the application of a toxic chemical bought at the local store and make your problem worse and dangerous for your family. Killing lots of ants will not necessarily eliminate the colony since you need to kill the queen/s.
Biology & Colony Structure
An ant nest is the physical location where some or all of the ants return after foraging. Typically this is also the location where the eggs, larvae and reproductive ants are also located.
Pest Management Professionals (PMP’s) have at their access a variety of baits, insect growth regulators, and non-repellent materials, which all may be used together in IPM (Integrated Pest Management) to control or even totally eliminate any ant infestation.
Ant Baits
In most situations, ant baits should be the product of choice to control ants. For effective ant control it is often necessary to destroy the whole colony and to do this it is necessary to kill the queen/s. At A1 we provide extra baits to feed the colony after we leave to avoid you paying for additional treatments. Baits tap into the the natural behaviour of ants, allowing the potential for complete control with the need to locate the nest. By placing the bait near foraging trails, ants can quickly find the food and take it back to the nest.
When ants take the bait back to the nest, they share the food with other members of the colony through trophallaxis. As well as having an attractive bait matrix, successful baits need to utilise a delayed action insecticide. This allows the bait to be spread throughout the colony before it starts to affect the ants, ensuring the bait has been passed onto the queen/s and larvae before they can react to any ill effect.
Ant baits come in a range of formats; liquid, gel, granule or solid. Typically, the sugar based baits are liquids or gels and the protein and oil baits are granules or solid. The choice of bait depends on the species present, the location (inside/outside) and any safety considerations.
Key Tips for Successful Baiting
- Choose the correct bait based on the food preference for the species present
- Check that the species will take the proposed bait before carrying out a complete treatment
- Ensure enough bait is placed for the estimated size of the colony (insufficient amounts will lead to incomplete control)
- If all the bait has been taken within 24 hours, apply additional bait
- Depending on the species, additional applications may be necessary (especially for multi-nest/ multi-queen colonies)
- For multi-nest colonies, consider the use of non-repellent sprays, especially if the aim is to exclude the ants from buildings
Try not to leave washing up overnight as it attracts ants.
White-footed house ant
Identification: the worker of the White-footed house ant is around 2.7mm in length, and black in colour with yellow feet.
Biology: White-footed house ants are known to be voracious breeders and a single nest may contain several million workers and several queens.
Nesting sites: their nests are normally found to the exterior of homes in soil or in trees. Inside buildings they are found in wall cavities, fireplaces, roof voids, and skirting boards.
Odorous House Ant
How to identify: the size of the Odorous House ant is around two to three millimetres; of uniform black to brown in colour and if crushed, has a distinct rotten odour, like rancid butter.
Biology: These colonies may contain around ten thousand or upwards ants that are able to establish sub nests or subsidiary colonies. They can mix with different colonies of their own species.
Nesting sites: They construct their nests more likely in the soil of your yards, at the crown of trees, and interior areas. They will nest around damp areas below buildings and inside walls. Leaks from plumbing, under shower recesses, via broken guttering & roof tiles.
Pharaoh Ants
Identification: The workers are all the same size about 1.6 mm long. They are yellow or honey-coloured. They have 12-segmented antennae with 3-segmented club.
Nesting sites: They commonly build their nests in walls, behind skirting boards, and in folds of clothes.
It’s not common to find bulldog ant (or bull ant) inside buildings; they are located mostly in bushy areas where they can have their nest in soil near wood logs or under rocks with extensive tunnel system. When the nest gets disturbed the bull ants get very aggressive, they will all come out of the nest as a massive force to attack whatever is taking their peace.
Identification: Carpenter ants vary in colour from black to dark brown to an brownish orange. The workers are 6 to 12 mm in length.
Biology: Carpenter ants are often confused with termites by the general public and enter homes with damp timbers to establish their nests. They rarely do any damage to timbers, but excavate rotting timbers with precision (that’s how they got their name as “carpenter” ants). The colonies of some species of Carpenter ants, may exceed 100,000 workers, with multiple queens and satellite nesting sites. Most species are smaller and require many years to reach maturity. They can travel long distances in search of food.
Argentine Ant
Identification: They are uniformly dull brown coloured. Workers are all the same size, about 2 to 3 mm long. Thorax uneven in shape when viewed from side. They emit musty odour when crushed.
Ant Control
Effective control of ants often relies on a knowledge of their foraging and nesting habits. At the broad level, a knowledge of the nesting habits and feeding habits of important pest species can be helpful. More specifically, where a given infestation is being treated, a thorough survey and inspection should be carried out.
Whereas locating an ant nest is not always possible, every effort should be made to locate the nest. Not only can it make the control easier, but it allows for confirmation of colony elimination after a treatment. Each species has typical nesting places, which narrow down the places to look.
However, following food-carrying ants on active foraging trails provides the best method of nest location. Knowing whether they are nesting outside or inside can also have an impact on the treatment.
For example, there is little use in carrying out an exterior perimeter treatment if the nest is only inside the building. Direct treatment of the nest, where possible, can provide the most effective, longer-term control. Alternatively, the use of chemical barriers that interfere between the nest and possible food sources is often effective.
Non-chemical prevention and control.
The state of hygiene and sanitation in and around buildings influences the likelihood of infestation by scavenging ants. They love to visit us indoors to search for food, water and shelter, so minimisation of left over food particulars and crumbs should be your goal. On the same token, water should be restricted and any drops of spilled water should be immediately cleaned up. Crockery and cutlery should not be left on the benches or tables after use and should be washed and stored away ASAP. Exterior areas should likewise be restricted of food and water (e.g. pet feeding bowls should be cleaned after use and feeding should take place well away from your home. Used drink bottles & cans should be placed in lockable bins away from your house). Consider growing pest deterring plants such as the pyrethrins.
Chemical control.
The effective use of chemicals to control ants relies on a thorough inspection should attempt to locate nesting sites, feeding sites and the routes of travel between them.
If ants are tracking their way into a wall void, spot treatment should be used ASAP.
Once a thorough inspection has been carried out, a treatment plan should be carried out. Control strategies may involve:
1. Spraying the nest directly. This is done by the use of dusts, low toxic sprays or a granular treatment. Sometimes drilling or other access may need to be used.
2. Residual low toxic insecticidal barriers. If it is difficult to treat sites of pest ants directly, we may indirectly apply dusts or spray non-fuming ant killer insecticide to infested areas & cracks/crevices.
3. Ant bait gels.
The deployment of baits
In broad terms, chemical treatments restricted to the inside of premises may achieve good control if all nesting sites are located outdoors as well, interior treatments alone may be very limited in their effectiveness. Some types of insecticide formulations and methods of application for ant control are summarised as follows:
Surface sprays – In ant control, surface sprays in the form of emulsifiable concentrates, wettable powders, suspension concentrates and foams are foams are widely used. Such treatments may involve treating outdoor nesting sites and/or spraying surfaces over which the ants travel. These may include cracks in paths, wall-path junctions, points of entry such as window stills and door jambs, and wall voids. Ants generally trail along defined architectural lines such as expansion joints, pipe, joints in masonry or edges of paths. Indoors, areas serving as traveling routes might be treated. These may include the bases of skirtings behind kitchen equipment, window and door frameworks, corners among cupboards and benches, and various cracks and crevices. When used effectively, these chemicals, backed up by sound sanitation and hygiene practice, should give suitably long-term protection.
Space sprays – Insecticides applied as space sprays have limited application in ant control procedures. Where the method of application has facility for crack and crevice treatment, this may prove useful for the direct treatment of nesting sites that are reasonably confined (e.g. in brick cavity walls) – provided that safety implications are taken into account.
Dusts – Insecticidal dust formulations can be useful in ant control. They may be applied directly into nesting sites (where known) or lightly on surfaces over which the ants travel. Dusts can be particularly appropriate in the treatment of sensitive areas such as electrical switch boards, equipment and wall and roof voids.
Baits – Insecticidal baits are widely used in situations where nest location and treatment is difficult or impossible, or where insecticides in the form of sprays or dusts are not appropriate or allowed. The baiting approach usually relies on the transference of insecticidal baits back to the nest, where all the individuals, including the reproductive female(s), will eventually consume the poison in sufficient quantity yo cause death.
Baits are very effective in the control of a variety of ant species. Competition from other food sources is a common hindrance to the effectiveness of baiting. In placing baits, the safety of children and pets should be considered. In general, ants may prefer either carbohydrates, fats or oils, but some may be attracted to two or even three of these food groups.
In summary, ant control often relies on:
1. A thorough inspection and survey/analysis of activity patterns.
2. Direct treatment of nests where possible.
3. Formation of insecticidal barriers between nests and food sources and/or the placement of baits in appropriate locations.
4. The adoption of high levels of sanitation and hygiene.
Ants in dry areas
Even the cleanest home can have issues with ants. Ants seek two things in a house; food and water and as such, are attracted to bathrooms and toilets.
They’ll soon track inside to water or syrups in kitchens and as many pest control professionals would attest, even spotless cupboards can play host to ants by the hundred.
As such, it is a good idea to advise clients to keep sugars, syrups or anything else which attracts ant in airtight containers, or in the refrigerator.
Similarly, pet bowls are an attractant to ants, so it is often a good idea to create a moat of water around these bowls so the ants are unable to cross the water to get to the food.
The downside is, however, the water particularly if left for a day or two, could bring mosquitoes, so ensure that the water is always fresh.
Pet bowls are best placed outside the home, with the pet being fed only enough for it to eat it as one meal and not leave leftovers.
It is advised to keep your kitchen clean with lemon or vinegar, because acidic things repulse ants. Ants leave a chemical trail behind them when they find food or water to let others know where to go; by wiping the any trail with something acid, the chain will break.
A line of baby powder, chalk or baking powder can also act as a deterrent to ants, but it will only be a stop-gap band aid remedy, as killing off the nest is the only sure way to rid a home of the pesky creatures.
Nests can hold tens of thousands of ants and some homes may host multiple nests. Ants are particularly busy in hot dry weather. If the ants have nested in a wall cavity it might take multiple visits to rid the home of them.
Ant Biology and Colony Structure
An ant nest is the physical location where some or all of the ants return after foraging. Typically this is also the location where the eggs, larvae and reproductive ants are also located.
Depending on the species, an ant colony may be made up of one nest (“monodomous” or “single nest”) or many nests (polydomous” or “multi-nest”). Sometimes a colony may consist of hundreds of nests over a large area, a so-called “super-colony”.
In addition, some ant species have colonies with only one queen (a “monogyne” colony), whereas other species may have multiple reproductive individuals. These are “poly-gyne” or “multi-queen” colonies.
Only by killing all the queens in a colony will lasting control be achieved. A treatment may kill the vast majority of ants in a colony, but if even one reproductive individual survives and continues to lay eggs, the population will “rebound” and the ants may become a problem again.
Therefore, it is important to understand whether the species in question has a colony made up of one nest or multiple nests and whether it has multiple queens, as these factors have a big impact on the treatment regime.
Nest Location
Whereas locating an ant nest is not always possible, every effort should be made to locate the nest Not only can it make control easier, but it allows for confirmation of colony elimination after a treatment.
Each species has typical nesting places, which will narrow down the places to look. However, following food-carrying ants on active foraging trails provides the best chance of nest location.
Knowing whether they are nesting outside or inside can also have an impact on the treatment regime. For example there is little use in carrying out an exterior, perimeter treatment if the nest is inside the building.
Foraging Behaviour
Foragers are the older workers and venture out in search of food each day. In many ant species, the foragers recruit other workers once a suitable food source has been found, allowing them to fully exploit the resource. This often results is a well- formed ant trail as they take food back to the nest. For long-lasting food sources these foraging trails can remain persistent for a number of days.
Observing the foraging trails can help to determine the nest location and also identify what food the ants are currently eating. Knowing their current diet can influence the choice of ant bait in any control program.
Food Preferences
All species of ants need a range of food types to provide their nutritional requirements, although some species have a stronger preference for certain foods over others. These food preferences are split by food groups, sugar (from honeydew), protein (from other insects/animals) and fats/oils (from animals and plant seeds)
Food preferences often change through the year depending on the nutritional requirements of the colony. For example, an Argentine ant colony may prefer sugar in winter and spring, but is summer they will exhibit a higher preference for protein to support the increased egg laying and developing young.
Understanding the basic preferences of species is important when baits are used in a control program, to ensure the bait chosen contains the preferred food type for the target species.
Trophallaxis
Trophallaxis is the passage of liquids (normally food) between colony members and is one of the reasons ants have been so successful. Foraging ants bring food back to the nest where it is fed to the queen, larvae and other workers.
Adult ants are unable to ingest solid food and so exhibit a strong preference for liquid material. However, proteins and fats often only come in solid form and so these need to be taken back to the nest for processing.
Only the late instar larvae are capable of digesting solid food. They achieve this by secreting digestive juices directly on to solid food presented to them by the workers. Once the material has been partially digested into an acceptable liquid form, it can be or transferred to other colony members.
Ant Control Products
There are a range of different product types used to control ants including sprays, powders, granules and baits. These can be used on their own or in combination. However, it is ant baits that are often the preferred ant control measure as they have the ability to eliminate the whole colony.
Ant Baits
In most situations, ant baits should be the product of choice to control ants. For effective ant control it is necessary to destroy the whole colony and to do this it is necessary to kill the queen(s). Baits tap in to the natural behaviour of ants, allowing the potential for complete control without the need to locate the nest. By placing the bait near foraging trails, ants can quickly find the food and take it back to the nest.
When ants take the bait back to the nest, they share the food with other members of the colony through trophallaxis. As well as having an attractive bait matrix, successful baits needs to utilise a delayed action insecticide. This allows the bait to be spread throughout the colony before it starts to effect the ants, ensuring the bait has been passed onto the queen(s) and larvae before they can react to any ill effect.
Ant baits come in a range of formats; liquid, gels and the protein and oil baits are liquids or solid. The choice of bait depends on the species present, the location (inside/outside)and any safety considerations.
Key tips for successful ant baiting
1. Choose the correct baits based on the food preference of the species present.
2. Check that the species will take the proposed bait before carrying it a complete treatment.
3. Ensure enough bait is placed for the estimated size of the colony. Insufficient bait will lead to incomplete control).
4. If all the bait has been taken within 24 hours, apply additional bait.
5. Depending on the species, additional applications may be necessary (especially for multi-nest/multi-queen colonies)
6. For multi-nest colonies, consider the use of non-repellent sprays, especially if the aims is so exclude the ants from buildings.
Understanding bait performance
Choosing the correct bait based on food type is critical, but it is also important to understand the mode of action of the insecticide in the bait, as this impacts the speed of action.
Granular insecticides
Insecticide granules, where the insecticide is rather coated on ant sand granule or impregnated in clay, can be useful to treat large door areas.
The granules we use contain either bifenthrin or fipronil as the insecticide.
Whereas bifenthrin will kill ants that come into contact with the granules, being a pyrethroid insecticide, its repellent nature means its performance sends to be based on exclusion from an area. In contrast, fipronil granules (being non repellent) can be very affective in reducing population numbers and can times provide colony control.
COMMUNICATION AND PHEROMONES
Ants have diverse systems of communication, but by far the most important medium for signalling involves the chemicals known as pheromones. Ants can deposit chemical trails to
recruit nestmates to discoveries of food. Many ants can also produce highly volatile chemicals to signal alarm when they encounter dangerous predators or other hazards.
Different ants in different subfamilies use a remarkable diversity of glandular structures even just to produce recruitment pheromones. These may be produced from cloacal glands, Dufour’s glands, the hindgut, poison glands, pygidial glands, rectal glands, sternal glands, or even tibial glands on the back legs.
Furthermore, many pheromones appear to be complex mixtures of many chemical compounds. Pheromones can be effective in minute quantities; it has been estimated that one milligram of the trail substance of the leaf-cutting ant, Atta texana, if laid out with maximum efficiency, would be sufficient to lead a colony three times around the world.
Nestmate recognition is another important aspect of communication in ants. A pleasing metaphor for the ant colony is a factory inside a fortress.
Ant colonies are dedicated to the production of more ants; but workers need to “know” that they are working for their natal colony, and colonies also need to be well defended against other ants and against infiltration by other arthropods, which might tap into their resources. Ant colonies employ colony-specific recognition cues as one of their defence systems. These are often in the form of cuticular hydrocarbons that can be spread throughout the colony both by grooming and trophallaxis (the latter is usually associated with liquid food exchange).
Slave-making ants circumvent the recognition cues of their slaves by capturing them as larvae and pupae — these captives are not yet imprinted on their natal colony odour but later become imprinted on the odour of the colony that kidnapped them after they have metamorphosed into adult workers. Sometimes colony-specific odours also can be influenced by chemicals picked up from the colony’s environment.
Nevertheless, countless species of arthropods from mites to beetles have infiltrated ant colonies. For example, more than 200 species of rove beetle (Staphilinidae) are
associated with New World army ants alone, and other groups such as mites are probably even more species rich. Often these infiltrators are called “guests” simply because their relationships with their host ant colony and to its resources are unknown (Fig.2).
SELF-ORGANIZATION, COLLECTIVE INTELLIGENCE, AND DECISION MAKING
A rapidly developing approach to the study of ants and other social insects is the application of self-organization theories.
Here self-organization can be defined as a mechanism for building spatial structures and temporal patterns of activity at a global (collective or colony) level by means of multiple interactions among components at the individual (e.g., worker) level. The components interact through local, often simple, rules that do not directly or explicitly code for the global structures.
The importance of studies of such self-organization is that they can show how very sophisticated structures can be produced at the colony level with a fully decentralized
system of control in which the workers have no overview of the problems they are working to solve.
A simple and very intuitive example of how ants use self-organization is found in their ability to select short cuts. Certain ants can select the shortest paths to food sources. Indeed, where there is a short and a long path to the same food source, the decision-making mechanism can be surprisingly simple.
The ants that happen to take the shorter path get there and back more quickly than the ants that happen to take the longer path. All the ants lay attractive trail pheromones, and such pheromones are reinforced more rapidly on the shorter path simply because that path is shorter and quicker.
In such cases, individual ants do not directly compare the lengths of the two paths, but the colony is able to choose the shorter one. Sometimes the shorter path is used exclusively, while at other times a small amount of traffic may continue to use the longer path.
Having some traffic that continues to use the longer path is likely to be costly in the short term, but it may represent a beneficial insurance policy if the shorter path becomes blocked or dangerous.
Self-organization also has a major role in such phenomena as brood sorting, rhythms of activity within nests, and building behaviours. This new approach may help to answer, at least in part, the age-old challenge of how ant colonies are organized.
Following articles will be coming shortly on: Caste, Colonies, Nest Building, Pheromones, Sex Determination, and Sociality.
Further Reading
Bolton, B. (1994). “Identification Guide to the Ant Genera of the World.” Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA.
Bourke, A. F. G., and Franks, N. R. (1995). “Social Evolution in Ants.” Monographs in Behavioral Ecology.
Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ.
Camazine, S., Deneubourg, J.-L., Franks, N. R., Sneyd, J., Theraulaz, G., and Bonabeau, E. (2001). “Self-Organization in Biology.” Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ.
Detrain, C., Deneubourg, J.-L., and Pasteels, J. (1999) “Information Processing in Social Insects.” Birkhäuser Verlag, Basel, Switzerland.
Grimaldi, D., and Agosti, D. (2000). A formicine in New Jersey Cretaceous amber (Hymenoptera: Formicidae) and the early evolution of the ants.
Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 97, 13678–13683.
Hölldobler, B., and Wilson, E. O. (1990). “The Ants.” Belknap Press, Cambridge, MA.
Keller, L., and Genoud, M. (1997). Extraordinary lifespans in ants: A test of evolutionary theories of ageing. Nature 389, 958–960.
Passera, L., Roncin, E., Kauffmann, B., and Keller, L. (1996). Increased soldier production in ant colonies exposed to intraspecific competition.
Nature 379, 630–631.
Schmidt-Hempel, P., and Crozier, R. H. (1999). Polyandry versus polygyny versus parasites. Philos. Trans. R. Soc. (Lond) (B) 354, 507–515.
Sendova-Franks, A. B., and Franks, N. R. (1994). Social resilience in individual worker ants and its role in division of labour. Proc. R. Soc.
(Lond) (B) 256, 305–309.
FIGURE 1 The army ant, Eciton burchelli. (a) Head of major worker. (b) Head of minor worker. (c) Head width vs ponotum width allometry for workers. (d) Frequency–dry weight histogram for a large sample of workers.
The allometrical relationship has a slope greater than 1, so larger workers (such as majors) have disproportionately large heads. The size frequency distribution is skewed to the right so relatively few of these very large majors are produced. (Drawings © Nigel R. Franks.)
The takeaway message is that killing off the nest is the only way to rid your home of the pesky creatures and that’s when you need to contact your local pest controller.
If your home or business has a ant infestation, we have you covered. Our safe strategies and goals are to remove these vermin as efficiently and safely as possible (with minimal fuss) around the Sydney region in the Hills, North Shore and up to the Northern Beaches.
Pest management first step is to have a professional pest inspector analyse your property. We use a wide range of techniques to pinpoint potential damage or problems.
