How to Get Rid of Sugar Ants

How to Get Rid of Sugar Ants



The first thing you need to do is seal up your house. Use caulking on
cracks and crevices and weather stripping for under doors. If your
house is sealed like a fortress, the ants cannot get in.


The next step is also a preventative and that is to get rid of the
food sources. Clean up your kitchen and make sure there are no sweets
such as sugar and the like for the ants to feed on.


Now you need to make sure your ants are actually sugar ants and are
attracted to sweets. Put out a sweet food source and watch for the ants
to go for it. When you find the trail, dust it with a safe, botanical
pesticide such as something from EcoSmart. EcoSmart sells pesticides
that are so safe, they are actually exempt from EPA regulation.


The ants will walk through the trail of pesticide and when they clean themselves, they will ingest it.
Now that you now the ants are going for sweets you can put out sugar based bait. The worker ants will take the bait back to the colony and feed the larvae. The larvae produce a by-product that both the workers and queen will feed on. In this way you are killing the entire colony.
To keep the ants from entering in the first place, you can kill them in the yard before they come in.  Be proactive by using a time release granule around the outer perimeter of your home.
Ants can be a nuisance but if you follow these tips they are generally pretty easy to get rid of.

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How to Keep Cockroaches Out of the House

How to Keep Cockroaches Out of the House
Keeping cockroaches out of the house requires and integrated approach to pest management. The first and most important thing you need to do is get rid of all food sources.
Cockroaches will eat just about anything.  If you have crumbs of food hiding somewhere they will find them so you need to do a thorough job cleaning. If there is nothing for the roaches to eat, they won’t come in.

Clean under cabinets, inside drawers and cabinets, in the pantry under the stove and refrigerator and anywhere else that food or debris may be hiding.
The next thing you need to do is make your home a fortress. Make sure there are no cracks or crevices where roaches can enter. If you are sealed up, they cannot come in. You can do this with caulking, expandable foam and weather stripping.
The types of roaches that you will usually find coming in from the outside are the big ones, often incorrectly referred to as palmetto bugs in Florida. These are American roaches, Asian roaches and brown roaches.
German roaches are smaller and come into your house in other ways.  German roaches will typically make their way in through bags and boxes of groceries, fruits and vegetables. If you go to a farmers market or you will want to make sure you thoroughly check all bags and boxes before you bring them into your home.
The next thing you need to do is to treat the outside of your home. Kill them before they have a chance to get in. Roaches like to eat wood and will often live under wet piles of mulch, so cleaning them up is a good preventative.
If you have lots of decorative mulch that you don’t want to get rid of, treat the outside of your home with a safe pesticide. Pyrethrums are very effective and are also quite safe. While this is a synthetic pesticide, it is made from Chrysanthemums and is therefore biodegradable and safe for the earth.
When it comes to roaches, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of pesticide. Follow these tips and you won’t have problems with those nasty critters in your home.

How to Kill Black Carpenter Ants

How to Kill Black Carpenter Ants

Carpenter Ants

Black carpenter ants are one of the tougher critters to get rid of. Once they have established a colony there may be anywhere from15,000 to 100,000 ants. Black carpenter ants will also build satellite colonies, so now you are talking about even more ants.
The first step to killing these ants is to find out where they are living and it might not be easy as these ants are sometimes hiding real well.
Carpenter ants don’t eat wood, but they like to live in it. If you have carpenter ants living in wood, it is likely that you have had termites at one time. Carpenter ants are opportunistic and will live in the holes termites have left behind, and then they will eat the termites.
Since carpenter ants are mostly nocturnal, you will see more of them at night but you should still be able to spot some of them moving on their trail in the daytime between satellite colonies. If you can follow them, you will know where to attack.
Once you find out where they live, you will need to kill the whole colony. You may find them in damp wood piles, in voids in your home, in your attic and under insulation. A sure sign of the ants is a waste that they will kick out of their home. This consists of waste, wood chips, dirt and carcasses of insects they have eaten.
Now you will need to spray their trials with a pesticide. Spray under eaves, voids and wood piles. You will not want to use a heavy duty pesticide in voids in your home so a product from EcoSMART is a more natural option.
Products from EcoSMART are botanically based and some of them are so safe, they are exempt from EPA regulation.
In addition to spraying and dusting pesticide on their trails, you can use a Boric Acid based bait. This is both safe and effective. Bait will be carried back to the colony and will kill it off. This is a great method if you are having a hard time locating the colony but have found a trail.
If the carpenter ants are still hanging around, don’t feel defeated. These are tough little buggers. You may need to call a professional to help you finish the job.