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Hello, and thank you for joining me for another episode of the Ben’s pest control podcast. My name is Ben Sell, and I’m the owner of Ben’s pest control. And today I want to discuss sugar ants. Now I’ve actually done an episode on sugar ants in the past. But because they are such a prevalent, just common found pest in Florida, I felt it was a best time to have another podcast on it. Just in case people are going back and they don’t find my last one. But I can tell you right now it is June here. And it is hot in Florida. At times, it’s raining and we are in full blown season. And the Ghost Dance, which some people call sugar ants are just the calls are going crazy people are seeing them having them everywhere. They are all over it has been absolutely busy with these ants right now. So one of the things I like to tell homeowners is whether you’re listening to me because you want to try to do it yourself, or whether you have hired somebody, one of the things that is very important when it comes to these ants is the plants around your house. One of my favorite sayings is there’s a reason they put the word ant in the word plant, these two things go hand in hand. And now when I say that, in almost every case I’ve ever seen not quite every but in almost the answer coming from outside somewhere and finding their way into your house. Now there are a few exceptions. I mean, we get some people who may buy a plant at the store, or they may set a plant outside and the ants move in. And then the ants around the plant, and they end up bringing them into the house. But even in saying that, in most cases, they come from outside. Now if you can find the trail where the ants are coming from outside, your best bet is always to bait these things outside, you want to put out the bait, it’s going to draw the ants, the ants are going to go crazy, they’re going to come and eat it up. So if you’re going to get a lot of activity from beating these ants, if you can put it outside, you’re going to give yourself much better or reaction in the house because they’re going to be going wherever that food is. Now for those of you who aren’t familiar, let’s say bathing is similar to you go to the store and you buy yourself a chocolate cake and you bring it home and you set it on the counter. Well, if these ants find that chocolate cake, they are going to be all over it, they will be like house at a feeding trough just go into town to eat the sweets and the bait is very similar. So if you can find that trail outside, put the bait outside, you can draw the ants outside immediately. And give yourself a reduction in ants inside the house. Now, what I tell people all the time is that treating ghost ants is a little bit like a roller coaster with a lot of hills on it. And what I’m saying by that is when you have the activity, there can be a lot of ants. So let’s say it’s at the top of the hill, you put out some bait, they eat it up. And then usually within I don’t know six to 10 hours, their their activity goes way down, their numbers go way down. But then they start to creep back up.
And as their numbers creep back up, their population is recovering from having been poisoned. And that can go all the way back up to the same level it was before if you don’t put out more bait. So by putting out more bait, what you do is you’re getting even more poison worked into the colony to help you kill the ants. And that’s important to remember. And sometimes if it’s a really bad situation, I’ve seen houses that we’ve made it in some cases for five or six weeks to get their numbers down and you’ve got to keep on top of it. You’ve got to keep applying the bait. And And here’s another recommendation don’t just assume because you found them in one spot this week. If they start to come back that they will be in the same spot. I firmly believe they move. It’s very hard to explain on a podcast. But if you were ever as a child and in in school and they were doing classes or on insects, I don’t know if you’ve ever seen this I’ll try to explain to you but if you if you had an ant colony and they found a piece of food, the initial trail to that piece of food might be described as a large letter C on a sheet of paper Per, and the colonies in one spot and the trail going through that nest is in a different spot. And the way that getting there might be like a large sea well over time, as they find the food and they’re happy with the food, usually their their path will straighten out. Till eventually, it’s almost like in a straight line. And so what I believe is sometimes when you poison the ants, the ants kind of go back into more of a safety protection type mode. They don’t, I believe, they don’t know why they’re dying. And they’re, they kind of panic and freak out. So they go back to following other trails and other paths that they felt more comfortable with. And so a lot of times when you go to do the second, third, fourth, bading, whatever you’re doing, you have to still check the whole house because their activity may have moved from one area to a whole different area. And now you’re going oh, wait a second. Now they’re over here. And if you’re missing that spot, and you’re not getting the bait out to them, you’re kind of starting all over or their numbers are building back up. Another thing to keep in mind, and this is just my personal opinion, you want to be very, very careful. And if possible, not spray these ants, there’s a term for what these ants go through referred to as budding. With this ant, they can have up to seven queens in a colony. And when you spray an insecticide on their workers, budding is like they go into a panic frenzy. And they can split up. And you could actually end up with seven nests. And over time, if all seven of those nests grow, you could have hypothetically 49 Queens in the seven nests and their numbers get really, really bad. And usually every summer I don’t think I’ve seen it yet. And I don’t think I’ve been told about it. But I know it’s coming somewhere we will get a call Hold on. Sorry about that I had to take a drink, we will inevitably get a call from somebody who was going to say to us while they started out here and we sprayed them and next thing you know they were in this room in this room. And before you know what the trails are thick as can be they’re all over the house. And they are just running rampid and sometimes the trails can get the size of a pen or pencil thick of activity going back and forth, if not thicker if they’ve just been sprayed and sprayed and sprayed. And I’ve seen him walk across the top of a ceiling almost in every room in a house just to go from one room to another room. So again, this is Ben with Ben’s pest control. If hopefully my information helped you. If you are interested in more information, please feel free to check out our website at WWW dot bends pest stop is or give our office a call at 772-878-1972 and we’ll be happy to give you one of our free 58 Point pest surveys and analysis. Otherwise, I hope you have a great week. Thank you
