PHARAOH ANT TREATMENT
PROCESS AND NEEDED INFORMATION
Pharaoh Ants are originally from Africa and are found primarily inside of structures. The Pharaoh Ant’s main mode of entering a structure is by hitching a ride on boxes, furniture, grocery bags, or by walking along power lines to your home.
Pharaoh Ants are a very difficult household pest to control. They are very small, less than 1/16th of an inch long. Their color is a uniform, light tawny brown. Pharaoh Ants readily nest inside wall voids, appliances, linens, heating ducts, lighting fixtures and in attics. They prefer to be close to heat and moisture sources.
The colonies are usually small but can number as many as a million workers and several hundred queens. Adult Pharaoh Ants can be divided into two groups, workers and reproductive. Worker ants are sterile females that live about sixty to seventy days. Reproductive ants, which include queens, live about nine to twelve months. Reproductive males live a very short time, dying soon after the queens have mated.
Pharaoh Ant colonies are very mobile and if conditions become unfavorable they will pick up and move to a more suitable site. When a colony becomes stressed from lack of water or food they will fracture into one or more colonies to ensure at least some small part of the main colony will survive. New colonies are started by a process call “budding”. This is when a colony grows too large for its nesting site and will fracture into two or more smaller colonies, these colonies move out in search of other nesting sites.
Pharaoh Ants feed on a wide variety of food products including items that contain protein, carbohydrates and fat. Around the home, they will feed on things such as grease on the stove top and dead insects on a windowsill. In hospitals, Pharaoh Ants have been seen feeding on the wounds of patients. They require lots of water and are found in kitchens and bathrooms. Their size allows them to enter packaged foods and feed on the contents, even if the food is still sealed. These ants have been known to enter jars of food by walking along the threads of the screw cap when closed.
Pharaoh Ants have the ability to survive most conventional household pest control methods because about only five percent of the colony forages for food at any one time. Insecticide applications will kill the foraging workers leaving ninety-five percents of the colony still some place in the wall or attic of your home. When foraging workers do not return, the colony senses something is wrong and they will fracture into two or more additional colonies, and spread throughout the building. Insecticide treatments however, do appear to work for a while because ants are not seen, but soon reappear in seemingly greater numbers.
The first stage of this baiting treatment, the sterilizing process, will last three weeks. The second stage of this method, the insect killing baiting, will only last one week. The final stage, the last week of the treatment, is the lasting protection from our “Collier Compete Treatment.” . The complete Pharaoh Ant Treatment will continue only five weeks. The Collier Complete Treatment insures to you that no new colonies will enter into your home. If after 3 to 5 weeks a small amount of ants reappear, call our office to schedule a follow up visit. If this occurs, the ants that appear from a very large colony are new hatchlings that have not eaten any of the insect killing bait stored in the colony.
Growth regulating materials or sterilizing baits followed by insect killing baits is the only effective control for Pharaoh Ants. The sterilizing baits react slowly and will take 3 weeks for the worker ants to carry the bait back to the colony and fed to all the workers and queens. Upon consuming the sterilizing bait, the queens can no long produce eggs and the immature workers ants will not become adults. During this feeding cycle, no insecticide sprays or dusts should be used, allowing the worker ants to remain alive to bring the sterilizing bait back to the colony to eat.
During these first 3 weeks of sterilizing bait treatments, place button sized drops of sterilizing bait at the corners of window sills, corners of counter tops, corners of appliances, on the top of the medicine cabinet and door frames, and any area you find trailing ants. THIS BAIT WILL STAIN PORIOUS MATERIALS, so do not apply it to wallpaper, grout, painted walls or woodwork. If ants are trailing on the wall, take some wide tape and make a small circle out of it with the sticky side out and place it in the path of the ants and apply the bait on the tape. Watch these small button sized bait placements twice daily and replace any bait placement that has been eaten or as soon as any bait placement is eaten. You participation in this process is very important to the success of getting rid of the Pharaoh Ants. Do not spray any cleaners or insecticides near the bait placements, it will contaminate the bait or scare the ants away.
After 3 weeks of feeding these new pets of yours we will place ant killing baits throughout your home or business, inside and out, to rid you of all the trailing worker ants within 2 to 3 days.
The final step of Collier Pest Control’s Exclusive Pharaoh Ant treatment is for our service technician to come into your home or business and perform a complete preventative insect service we call The Collier Complete. You can now rest comfortably that all the Pharaoh Ants are now gone from your home or business.
If you live in Naples, Fort Myers, Bonita Springs, or anywhere in Southwest Florida, call Collier Pest Control for a further explanation of our Pharaoh Ant treatment or any or our services or look us up on our web site at collierpestcontrol.com, Don’t let unwanted guests spoil your beautiful Southwest Florida lifestyle. Remember, Florida does not have to be shared with insects!
Posted via OnFast - http://www.OnFast.com
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