Ant Control Maintenance: Keeping Your Marietta Home Ant-Free Long-Term

When faced with a problem, we must choose a long-term or short-term solution. Short-term solutions offer a quick, relatively painless fix to the problem. People often refer to quick resolutions as "kicking the can down the road" because they may provide immediate relief but don't address core issues. On the other hand, long-term solutions require time and micro changes, eventually drilling down to the root of the problem.

Ants are everywhere; you must determine if you want a quick-fix resolution or one that addresses the cause of an infestation and provides long-term results. If you have ants in the house and want to solve the problem once-and-for-all, start with the Marietta pest control experts from ProCare Pest Services. In 2014, our family-owned and operated company launched to provide our community with long-term, quality pest control solutions. We are here to take care of your ant problem.

You probably found this article while searching the internet because ants have invaded your Marietta house. In this article, you will learn how ants establish colonies inside homes and what you can do to keep them from invading your home in the future.

The Life Cycle Of Ants: How Ant Colonies Develop

An ant infestation occurs when ants create nests inside the home. There are two ways ants establish colonies inside houses. When you look out your window at dusk or sunrise in early spring or fall, you may notice swarms of flying insects around outdoor lights or hovering near windows where an inside light is shining. The reason for the phenomenon is that some ant species (and termites) produce a group of winged flying ants capable of reproducing. Crazy ants, thief ants, pavement ants, and odorous ants are the species in our area that create new colonies by dispatching winged reproducing ants.

In the spring, usually after heavy rain and when temperatures rise, male and female winged reproductive ants leave an established, mature nest. If the ants survive predators and the weather and find a suitable location, they mate in the air, and the male falls to the ground and dies. 

The future queen lands and burrows into the ground to create a chamber to raise the offspring. Soon worm-shaped, eyeless, and legless larvae emerge from the eggs and are fed with saliva from the queen. The larvae go through growth stages by shedding their shells until they spin a cocoon and enter the pupa stage. Eventually, the ants emerge from their spun chambers as adults. An ant's development process may take many weeks or months.

The ants that hatch and develop are part of a caste system that consists of blind, sterile female workers, male drones, and winged, reproductive ants. Male drones breed with the queen to continually produce more eggs. Flying reproductive ants (male and female) are usually not present until a colony is mature and numerically large enough to allow members to leave and form new nests.

Budding is the other process some colonies use to create new nests. Fire ants (some species), ghost ants, pharaoh ants, and Argentine ants in our area use this process. Colonies that bud have multiple queens in addition to the workers and drones; they do not have winged ants that fly. 

When one of these nests is disturbed, one or several fertilized queens exit with several worker ants to relocate to a new location. Once the entourage locates a haven, the queen begins producing eggs; the eggs are fed and protected by the worker ants until they mature. 

It is necessary to identify the ants infesting your house because if the species uses budding to create satellite nests, you may have more ant nests than when you began removing them from your Marietta home. ProCare Pest Services applies appropriate ant control solutions so you don't have more ants in your house.