Mar 1, 2012 – Little Troubles
QUESTION:
Small ants with small wings appear every spring in a kitchen. What could they be and what is the best thing to use to eliminate them permanently? There is a concrete slab throughout the home.
ANSWER:
I can think of three possibilities, and if these are dark black and shiny ants then they probably are just called The Little Black Ant - Monomorium minimum. If they are very light colored, sort of orange, they they are either Pharaoh or Thief ants, and these two species are nearly identical in appearance. Sometimes Pharaoh ants will have a bit of black on their abdomen as well, but the best character to separate them with accuracy will be on their antenna, and obviously you are going to need to use good magnification to see this. I have a 20X hand lens that does magnify sufficiently, but the best tool every pest control company ought to have in the office is a dissecting microscope. This will enable you to magnify the tiniest of bugs perhaps 100X or so, and now you can be certain of what the pest is.
View past Ask Mr. Pest Control questions.
Small ants with small wings appear every spring in a kitchen. What could they be and what is the best thing to use to eliminate them permanently? There is a concrete slab throughout the home.
ANSWER:
I can think of three possibilities, and if these are dark black and shiny ants then they probably are just called The Little Black Ant - Monomorium minimum. If they are very light colored, sort of orange, they they are either Pharaoh or Thief ants, and these two species are nearly identical in appearance. Sometimes Pharaoh ants will have a bit of black on their abdomen as well, but the best character to separate them with accuracy will be on their antenna, and obviously you are going to need to use good magnification to see this. I have a 20X hand lens that does magnify sufficiently, but the best tool every pest control company ought to have in the office is a dissecting microscope. This will enable you to magnify the tiniest of bugs perhaps 100X or so, and now you can be certain of what the pest is.
At the end of an ant's antenna there will be several enlarged segments that we refer to as the "club". On a Pharaoh Ant it is the last three antennal segments that are enlarged while on the Thief Ant it is only the last two segments. This is an important distinction to make. Thief ant colonies are generally very small and found in small hidden places. Pharaoh ants can have colonies of hundreds of thousands of workers, and they often split off and establish new colonies, so you may have a number of separate colonies within a single structure and all of them need to be dealt with. Pharaoh ants also are very sensitive to insecticides, and if you rely on chemical sprays it could be the trigger that separates workers from their home colony, and since all the workers are females some of them may begin their own colonies in new places.
Baiting is an excellent method for doing control of Pharaoh ants, although now we also have a number of "non-repellent" insecticides that can be used along with the baiting. The best program probably combines the two. Liquid or gel sugar baits work well on the tiny ants, and it is best to figure out which nourishment they are looking for - carbohydrate or protein - and offer the bait that they are most likely to accept. You need to find out where their foraging trails are and place the baits as close as possible to these ants, but in a location that is acceptable to the customer as well. Use several different kinds of baits, as this may offer the best chance the ants will accept it. If you can get them really interested in a toxic bait this may be the best chance for eliminating all of the colony, as the foragers take the bait back into the colony and pass it around.
Pharaoh ants, and obviously I am guessing this is what you may have, also may have dozens of egg laying queens, so it's even more important to impact the colony itself. If it is Thief ants your inspection may discover the actual colony so you can treat it directly. Their colonies may be only a few hundred ants. Since you feel you are seeing these ants only in the Spring it's also possible they are outdoor colonies that are foraging inside the structure, and in this case the application of a non-repellent contact insecticide around the perimeter of the outside foundation may be very helpful. Use a product like Termidor that you know offers a good Transfer Effect, and this will help to eliminate that outdoor colony as well.
View past Ask Mr. Pest Control questions.
