Ant Control 101: A Helpful Guide for Lewisville Homeowners

Seeing one ant in your home isn't always cause for alarm. But if you're finding ants all over the house, and they keep coming back despite your best efforts, it is time to learn more about ant pest control in Lewisville. 

This guide is here to help you learn everything you need to know about these home invaders and provide the information you need to get rid of them once and for all. We'll start by exploring the life cycle of ants and how their colonies develop, which can help explain how infestations start and why it is so challenging to get rid of ants.

We'll also spend some time reviewing the dangers of an infestation. People tend to write ants off as a nuisance because ants are such common pests, but different types of ants that infest local homes can endanger your family and the structure of your house.

Prevention is a crucial component of ant control in Lewisville homes, so we will provide some tips and tricks the pros suggest to keep these troublesome pests out. Please keep reading to learn more about the best way to control ants year-round with the pros at Adams Exterminating Company.

The Life Cycle of Ants: How Ant Colonies Develop

Most ant colonies begin when a new queen flies away from an old colony and mates with a male. She then finds a suitable location to start the new colony, drops her wings, and creates the nest. The new queen will then wait in the nest for her eggs to mature over the next several weeks. 

The queen will then care for her first brood, tending the eggs, feeding the larvae, and tending to the pupae. When the eggs develop into adults, they will become worker ants. The female worker ants take over feeding and caring for the brood; the queen's sole purpose now is to lay eggs and expand the colony's size. 

Some colonies begin slightly differently. Pharaoh ant colonies, for example, start with a flightless queen mating in the old colony, and workers will then accompany her to form a new colony. Colonies of pharaoh ants can have multiple queens and tend to have large populations of workers. 

Occasionally, workers will start their own colony through a process called budding. Budding can happen with or without a mature queen. In these cases, the workers carry the immature eggs, larvae, and pupae to a nest site and raise some of these immatures to become reproductive males and females.

Colony size depends greatly on the species in question, and species with multiple queens in the same colony can produce large numbers of workers. The following list will explain the size of the colonies for the most common types of ants in Lewisville:

• An acrobat ant colony on your property typically has a couple of thousand members.
• A mature carpenter ant colony has between 10,000 and 20,000 workers, and large colonies can have more than 50,000.
• The average fire ant colony contains between 100,000 and 50,000 workers, and colonies with multiple queens can have up to 40 million ants per acre of land.
• Odorous house ant colonies can have multiple queens and typically have a few hundred to 10,000 individuals.
• The size of a pharaoh ant colony on your property can vary from a few dozen to several thousand and up to several hundred thousand individuals with multiple queens.
• Rover ant colonies range from a few hundred to a few thousand members.

These numbers help to explain why that single ant you saw in your kitchen one day suddenly turns into a severe infestation. One worker ant indicates that there are hundreds to thousands more close by. These worker ants leave trails of pheromones to help the rest of the colony locate the food source in your home.

Whether you are currently dealing with an infestation or just starting to see an ant here and there, Adams Exterminating Company is here to help. Contact us today to learn how our ant pest control services can eliminate an infestation and prevent ants from returning.