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ARGENTINE ANTS
The argentine ant is the biggest problem in the Bay Area. You can find them almost everywhere in and around your home. They will enter your home when the weather becomes too hot, too cold or too wet. They will also enter when their food supplies outside dwindle. This means they can enter at anytime.
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Argentine workers are about 1/8 inch long and are light to dark brown. Queens can reach up to 1/4 inch.
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The biggest problem with this ant is the fact that they have multiple queens. There can be as many as eight queens every 1,000 workers. Only queens can lay eggs. Ants go through a complete metamorphasis. Egg,to larve, to pupe, to adult. More queens means more ants can be raised faster.
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Most ants of the same species will have their own territory and will fight another colony should they cross over. Argentine ants do not. They allow other workers and even queens to pass through freely. Therefore, this ant is polydomous.
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Argentine ants have a swarmer cast. New queens and males. However, mating takes place inside the nest. You might see them in the evenings during the summer months. Instead of swarming like most other ants, new colonies are started by budding. This means one or more queens take some of the workers and walk away to make a sub-colony.
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Argentine ants prefer to live in moist soils near their food supplies. They will travel along trails and eat whatever than can. Like insects, as well as grains, their primary food is honeydew. A sweet sugar stool of aphids and other sap-sucking insects. Honeydew can make up as much as 70% of their diet. The argentine ant will protect these bugs from other preditors as payment for the honeydew. This ant will also carry aphids to other plants to increase the honeydew supplies.
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One of the biggest misconceptions is that if you have ants around your home you do not have termites. This is not true. If you open a wall to expose termites or if termites are swarming the ants will prey on them. However, do not rely on ants to keep termites away from your home.
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When food supplies drop or sudden weather changes occur argentine ants will enter your home in large numbers with multiple queens. Once inside the queens may fracutre into serveral sub-colonies making it much harder to control them. You can find them in your kitchen,bathrooms, closets, laundry baskets, potted plants, dishwasher, cabinets, in other words, anywhere.
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To control argentine ants an exterior treatment is required. We treat the exterior with TERMIDOR. A ban spray two feet up and out from your home, along with any trails extending into the yard.
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The ants cannot detect this chemical. This means they will continue to cross through it. The chemical is spread through touching each other. It will not kill them for several hours, allowing them to spread it exponentally outside the treated zone. Since the ants inside your home are part of the colony outside, the ants that pass through TERMIDOR can kill the ones inside.
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If you see large trails of ants inside, it may be necessary to also treat the interior to control the infestation. We treat a minumum of the kitchen and all bathrooms. However, we can do spot treatments almost anywhere in your home.
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For long term control either EVERY TWO MONTH or QUARTERLY service will be necessary.
888 292-7378
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