Ants

Pharaoh ants are notorious pests all over the world. Measuring around 2mm in size, they tend to be yellow, red, or light brown in color, with almost transparent bodies. Pharaoh ants are a tropical species, which means that they can't cope well with cooler weather outdoors but can thrive and multiply in warm indoor spaces.

Pharaoh ants colonies have multiple queens. This allows them to form bud colonies, via the process of budding. Budding is when a section of the main colony separates and starts a new, smaller colony in a different location. Each colony can have hundreds of thousands of individual pharaoh ants, and one female will lay up to 400 eggs during the course of her life. Pharaoh ant queens can live up to a year, while workers usually live two to three months.

Pharaoh ants can form colonies and nests in many different locations and are often found nesting indoors, due to the advantages of warmth and protection inside buildings. Because of this, it can be difficult to find them, but they are most likely to nest near sources of food and water, like inside kitchen walls or under countertops. They can eat a wide variety of foods, preferring meaty and fatty foods but also able to feed on sugars and syrups.

f you have pharaoh ants in Toronto that need to be controlled and removed, a common method is to make use of meat and sugar baits, placed near the nesting areas to lure the ants out without disturbing them. The use of insecticide sprays is not recommended, as it can cause the ants to stress and separate, possibly forming new nests and colonies elsewhere.

How to get rid of pharaoh ants?

If you have a problem with pharaoh ants Toronto, our residential and commercial pest control services can help. Baiting is the most preferred pharaoh ants treatment; this involves using special ant baits to poison the colony and kill the queen.

Do pharaoh ants bite?

Many people worry about whether or not pharaoh ants bite humans. In reality, pharaoh ants do have the ability to bite but are not known for causing painful bites. The main worry with pharaoh ants is that they can easily spread bacteria and infections. Pharaoh ants disease is, therefore, a concern when you have an infestation.

What are pharaoh ants?

Pharaoh ants are a small type of ant, originating in tropical regions but found all over the world. They can commonly form nests and colonies in buildings and spread quickly, so have to be identified and controlled with care and efficiency.

Where do pharaoh ants live?

Pharaoh ants can be found all over the globe in the Americas, Europe, Asia, and other areas too. They survive best in tropical climates. So, if the weather is relatively cool or mild, they'll head indoors and form nests inside buildings.

Carpenter ants are the biggest ant species of them all, with individual worker ants regularly growing over 1cm in length and queens able to grow over 2cm in length. Carpenter ants’ size is their most distinguishing feature, but they can also be identified by their black bodies. Some species may also have red or brown tones.

Worker carpenter ants have no wings, but some adult black carpenter ants have wings and are actually able to mate while in the air. A colony can have up to 15,000 individual worker ants. The average lifecycle for black carpenter ants is about two months.

Carpenter ants make their nests in wood. They usually look for damp areas of wood and use their mandibles to chew up the wood and make extensive galleries for their colonies to live in. However, they do not consume the wood. Instead, they leave behind a sawdust-like material after chewing it up. In terms of what do carpenter ants eat, they tend to be most attracted to sugary solutions and foods, doing most of their feeding in the night and early hours of the morning.

If you have a problem with carpenter ants in Ontario, the best course of action is usually to make use of bait of some kind that the ants will take back to the nest to kill the queen and eliminate the colony. To prevent carpenter ants from appearing in the first place, any piles of wood or damp pieces of wood should be removed from your property. Food items should also be sealed safely in containers to avoid attracting these ants, as they have a strong sense of smell.

How to get rid of carpenter ants?

A common method used by pest control experts to get rid of carpenter ants is baiting. This is when a special ant bait, usually containing some sort of sugar solution to attract the ants, is placed near the nest. The ants will then consume the bait and take it back into the nest, where it can be eaten by the queen and gradually kill the colony.

How to identify carpenter ants?

To identify carpenter ants, it's helpful to know some of the common signs of carpenter ants. A common sight is little piles of wood shavings or sawdust-like material being spotted inside the home in areas like under baseboards, in door frames, or around window sills. You may also hear little rustling sounds inside walls or doors, or notice the appearance of winged ants creeping out from crevices and cracks around windows and doors.

What are carpenter ants?

Carpenter ants are a particular type of ant. They're the largest species of ant known to man and they are named due to the fact that they live in wood and use their mandibles to carve through damp, deadwood.

Why do I have carpenter ants?

One reason you may have carpenter ants is that you have attracted them to your property by storing large amounts of damp or dead wood around the home. Sweet smells can also attract these ants, like food spillages that aren't cleaned properly.