Dealing with ants can be frustrating and often customers want these critters gone after their first treatment. Immediate results, like you get when you spray ants with a cleaner, are attractive. However, the products we use at Insight work differently from a household cleaner and are more effective in the long run.
Eliminating Ants
Have you ever noticed how you’ll spray a product on ants, they die, and then you wake up the next morning to your cupboard shelf being full of 30-40 swarming ants? The product you sprayed on a few ants the day before, killed them on contact, but before you found those ants, some of their friends had already headed back to the colony. While they went back they left pheromone trails for other colony members to follow back to the food source they found in your kitchen. So your cleaner killed a few ants, but the rest of the colony was excited to hear about a new food source and ended up in your kitchen cupboard during the night.
Treat the Source
Here at Insight we treat the source of the issue, the colony. The best way to do that is by exposing ants to a product that will not kill them on contact. The products we use at Insight allow ants to come into contact with the product and take it back to their colony. Instead of killing one ant that was exposed to the product, the exposed ant spreads the product to many colony members. Then all of those exposed ants die, rather than just one.
Here is another analogy, think about the common cold and how easily it spreads. Why does it spread so easily? Because we often cannot detect the microscopic viruses’ presence until it’s too late. We may give a friend a hug who has the virus but is not showing symptoms, or we touch a railing that someone else with the virus touched 15 minutes before us. It’s extremely easy to catch a cold because we usually don’t know we have it until it’s too late.
The products we use to address an ant infestation work in much the same way. An ant will unknowingly come into contact with the product, then even after they are carrying the product, it is still undetectable to other colony members. Just as it would be much easier to avoid the common cold, if we as humans were able to see the virus, other ants in the colony would avoid the exposed ant if they could detect the product’s presence. However, just as we cannot see the cold virus, ants do not know that they have the product on them until it’s too late.
So Why Am I Still Seeing Ants?
Now that you understand the science behind our products it’s important to let the product do the work. Customers can interrupt this process of killing the colony when they decide to use their own products. If you see ants in your home, realize that they have crossed the protective barrier our technicians have applied outside (and inside if you requested an indoor treatment). They are going to carry the product back to the colony and spread it. However, this process is interrupted when those ants are killed on contact. If a customer continues to use their own products after our products have been applied, they will be stuck in the same repetitive circle they were in before; the customer will be killing all the ants that were supposed to spread our products to their colony. If you would like more information about why ants keep coming back, click here.
What Should I Do If I Continue to See Ants, Even After Treatment?
Ants can be persistent, know that if you see an influx in ant activity after our treatments, that means the product is working and you’ll start to see the activity die down. If activity persists past two weeks after our treatment, call our team to schedule a free follow-up. We may be working to treat multiple colonies, and if that is the case, it can take multiple follow-ups to address the issue.
Are You Struggling With Other Pests?
Maybe you are not struggling with ants, but with other pests. Rodents can be persistent in the Northwest, if you would like more information about our rodent treatment click here.
