Nature First Pest Control your natural organic residential and commercial Ant, Rodent, Wasp, Hornet, Grain Beetle, Bats, and more. Pest Control and Extermination experts. Serving Portland Oregon and the surrounding areas.

Small Ants

Things you need to know about local small ants:

Adult ants cannot eat solid food. They must take it back to the nest where the larvae pre digest it and feed it back to the workers and queen. This is why baiting can be so successful. Most small ant species have more than one queen. This is a survival mechanism that permits the nest to split when it is under attack, or is stressed (by chemicals). Ants have a highly developed sense of smell which they use to locate food, identify nest mates, communicate, and lay pheromone trails for other ants. Ants are very territorial. They constantly test the borders of other ant colonies and when they find a weak or empty colony, or house, they will move in. Some areas have many more colonies than others. This means that some homeowners have a constant problem, while others nearby don’t.

I hear various versions of the following story many times a year.

Once upon a time a homeowner saw a line of ants in her kitchen leading to some spilled food. At first she cleans up the food and scrubs the counters and floors (this breaks pheromone trails the trails ants lay down for other ants to follow to a food source) and she sees no more ants for a day or so. But all too soon, they’re back - usually in greater numbers. She hates to use sprays, but her mother-in-law is coming over and she doesn’t want her to think she is a bad housekeeper. She goes to the store and gets a can of NUKE’UM insecticide. She sprays every ant she sees and is gratified to see lots of dead ants. There will be no ants seen in the area sprayed for several days, they are repelled by the chemical smell. She just got a few days of relief and made the ant problem a lot worse. That insecticide was designed to kill on contact. if a homeowner didn’t see instant dead ants she wouldn’t buy it again. Some ants were hit by a little of the spray and staggered back to the nest. As they approached the entrance to the nest they act and smell different to the guards and workers in the nest. These contaminated ants are killed and an alarm pheromone is released in the colony. This puts stress on the colony and the colony reacts by splitting. Because there are multiple queens, the nest can split into several new colonies. The workers gather up some eggs, pupae, and a queen and move to another location in the house, like the bathrooms, or kids rooms. A couple of weeks after spraying ants with the insecticide you got at the hardware store you have ants everywhere. And they still come back to the kitchen. All this makes the chemical companies and the hardware store happy. The only thing you know to do is to keep spraying. Then you try a bait, right where you just sprayed. Of course the ants avoid it because of the chemical smell in the area and you think the bait is worthless. It may be worthless, but you didn’t give it a chance. This is about where you call an exterminator. They tell you to clear out your kitchen and stay out of the house for four hours after they spray. And they tell you that they have to spray again every six weeks, and would you just sign this two ear contract, please. They don’t kill the colonies either. But the spray keeps them at bay and you never connect their spray with your allergic flair ups.

There IS a Better Way

We have developed our methods based upon Randy’s observations in the field over the last 18 years. Randy found that Ants change their food preferences frequently with the changing needs for the colony. One time a sweet bait would be accepted, but a few days later be totally ignored. The colony of ants would now be in search of protein based foods. These observations have provided us with the tools to provide our clients with ‘One Visit” guaranteed small ant control.

So if you want to get rid of your ant problems Contact us by one of the methods below.

Your natural organic residential and commercial Ant, Rodent, Wasp, Hornet, Grain Beetle, Bats, and more. Pest Control and elimination experts. Serving Portland, Beaverton, Tualatin, Tigard, Sherwood, Wilsonville, Lake Oswego, West Linn, Milwaukie, Gresham, Hillsboro, Canby, Oregon City Forrest Grove, Portland, and all of Washington and Multnomah counties.

Nature First Pest Control
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503-579-3680
Mailing address
12625 SW Katherine St., Tigard, OR 97223
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