St. Louis Pest Control Information

Spring emergence is here.  Ants in and around your home have been patiently waiting all winter for spring to show its head.  And now that it has, ants are out in full force looking to feed and stock pile as much food as they can until the next winter arrives.  At Blue Chip Pest Services we receive hundreds of calls each spring just on this subject alone.  And in most cases, the homeowners describe  having no ant activity to having hundreds overnight. 

The reason this happens is very simple.  Ants have several missions in life but their main mission is to forage for food.  Once a single ant finds something worth harvesting it will signal all the other ants within the colony (which can be in the 1000′s) to come and harvest this new found food.   Luckily for us, we can use this characteristic to our advantage.  Whenever you have an ant problem but can’t locate exactly where the ants are originating from, then the best application you can make is to use an ant bait.  That’s right, feeding the ants with a quality ant bait will result in total colony elimination.  But be forewarned, baiting ants will cause the problem to increase at first, but this is good thing, it means the baits are being brought back into the colony.  The hard part for us, is being patient enough not to spray the ants with whatever aerosol is closest.  The reason why you do not want to spray anything at this point is because you do not want to contaminate the bait or kill any of the ants that are now carrying the bait back to the nest.   At Blue Chip Pest Services, we use Advion Ant Gel to gain control where other baits have failed.   Whether you have a pest control company initiate a baiting program or you are a family of D.I.Y.‘ers, the best approach is using ant baits to solve the problem. 

But, not all ant baits are created equally!   Don’t be fooled by some of the products found locally at your larger chain stores.  Cheaper products are in fact …made cheaper.  In order for ant baits to work the ratio of active ingredient to inert ingredient has to be perfect.  What does this mean to you and me?  The ants that harvest the bait have to have time to walk back to the colony, sharing it’s meal with the other ants (including the Queen) before the bait kills it.  The problem you have with some other baits is, the active ingredient is too high and therefore kills the original feeding ants before they have time to share their meal with the rest of the colony and therefore the colony is still in tack to rebound.

All in all, I would rather have ants every now and then, then some of the other insects that can and will infest homes in and around St. Louis at any given time.  But that is discussion that I will explain in another post.

Please call us if you have any questions or concerns regarding these pests at 636-343-7900 or go to http://www.bluechipexterminating.com/ for more information regarding our service options.