If you see a single ant, you don’t need to think too long or hard about how to kill it. The problem with infestations is another story altogether.

Ants in the home is a numbers game. If you have even one ant at home, you need ant pest control now because you know a lot more are never far behind. Let’s check out a few ways ant pest control can protect your home.

Safe, Strong Chemicals

Knowing how to kill ants requires knowing what they need to survive. Carpenter ants need a water source. Eliminating sources of moisture or standing water in and around the home is a great first step to preventing them from descending on where you live.

Pavement ants have a different diet. They eat almost anything, from other insects, seeds, honeydew, honey, bread, meats, nuts, and even cheese. Keeping your home free of these things usually just involves tidying the kitchen. Be mindful not to leave crumbs around, and you could have fewer ants to deal with.

Similarly, pharaoh ants enjoy a diet of sweets, oils, and proteins. This species of ant tends to be large. Worker pharaoh ants are often in the thousands. Disturb this type of ant, and they’ll take up a process called “budding,” where they migrate to new locations.

The key is to trap and kill them rather than let them pick up and shift their locations. Pharaoh ants have been found to spread over a dozen different disease pathogens, from salmonella to Streptococcus pyogenes.

Keeping ants outside your home by neglecting to attract them is ideal. But if the ants have already breached the gate and got inside, you need Toronto exterminators that use powerful chemicals that are harsh on ants but safe for pets and people.

The right balance is essential, so all the ants die, never to return, while the people and animals under your roof thrive. Never pose a risk to the people and creatures you love

Health Canada Approved

Presumably, exterminators for ants and other pests everywhere claim to be using safe chemicals. How can consumers be sure?

GreenLeaf Pest Control only uses chemicals approved by Health Canada, so there’s no doubt about the level of safety in our treatments. We look to promote health by ridding pests from your home while using healthy chemicals to get it done.

Our science-based solutions protect public health and the environment while improving the quality of life for people today and tomorrow. You don’t need to guess or hope that your ant exterminator is using safe materials when they have all been approved by a reputable agency like Health Canada.

Preventative Measures

Keep tree branches and other plants away from the house by trimming them back neatly. Pests won’t be able to use branches to enter the home if they’re cut back far enough.

Seal up any cracks or little openings around the bottom of exterior doors and windows. Using silicone-based caulking, seal up any cracks or openings you can find. Sometimes, ants burrow in firewood or building materials stored beside the home. Don’t give them a place to build nests adjacent to your home, or you may find them moving in with you.

Yes, there are different ant types that have their own characteristics, but these measures will be generally effective.

The above methods are preventative. They’re not really an extermination method. But if you keep them in mind, extermination won’t be necessary, which is a better overall result.

Abate the Problem with Bait

The more knowledge you have about the ant species in your home, the easier it is to find and kill them. The total of what homeowners need to know about carpenter ants is considerable if they decide to take measures into their own hands.

Be careful if you make a liquid bait: spraying only stresses out the ants and makes them likely to break apart. It’s easier to kill ants when they’re concentrated in one large group rather than spread apart into various groups.

Carpenter ants are a subtropical species, meaning they like moisture and warmth. The closest thing in your home to this is the bathroom, kitchen, or furnace. GreenLeaf begins every treatment with an advanced pre-baiting detection protocol.

By leaving proteins and carbohydrates in cards, we can determine their preferred food source and use this knowledge to create a more effective bait.

Once we’ve ascertained their location, destination, and dietary preferences, the killing begins! They’ll be addicted to the food in the cards, and we’ll swap out the non-lethal food with the treatment.

GreenLeaf Pest Control uses homemade baits at a very low concentration — at most, 1% active ingredient. We also use commercially available baits sometimes.

Determining what they like to eat is a crucial part of intelligence gathering needed to eliminate them. If the ants in your home respond to honey, but a sweet, carb-based bait. If they eat the fat or peanut butter, but a protest-based bait.

Of course, you can call in the experts to handle all this, so you can get your time back knowing that the carpenter ant extermination is being handled professionally by expert technicians. We’re proud to service all areas of the GTA, from the downtown core to many of the surrounding cities and towns.

Wherever you live, don’t get bogged down by seasonal carpenter ants at home; enjoy the spring and keep your home clean and pest-free.

The ins and outs of attracting and exterminating ants get more complicated the deeper you get. No two species are the same, and neither are the locations of infestation. However, knowing the above tips can help keep ants away in the first place or kill them once they’ve arrived.

Some people don’t want to deal with all this themselves, fearing that they don’t have the skill, time, or interest. If you’d like to hire friendly, local experts in pest extermination, don’t hesitate to call GreenLeaf Pest Control today.