PEST PROSpectives

The Ants are Coming!

• Pest Pros of Michigan

Share episode

They are the most common warm-weather pests to crawl around on your property: Ants! 

In this episode of PEST PROSpectives, Associate Certified Entomologist Amber Byars talks about the most common ant varieties in MIchigan, the potential destruction they can cause - and, most importantly, how to get rid of them.

Episode Resources
Pest Pros of Michigan





PEST PROSpectives is a Livemic Communications production.

Richard Piet:

I'm Richard Piet. Welcome back to another of our pest perspectives episodes, talking with the pest pros about pest control and their approach and things you should know as it relates to what kind of pests are out there, how we identify them, how we deal with them. Today's topic really is very common Ants. Amber Byers is back with us, associate certified entomologist at Pest Pros of Michigan. She oversees field operations there as well. Hello, Amber.

Amber Byars:

Hey Richard.

Richard Piet:

So there are some pretty common ants in southwest Michigan, is that right? When you think of the most common, which ones come to mind?

Amber Byars:

Yeah, absolutely. We get ant calls probably more often than any other general pest call during the summer, and there's a couple of top hitting favorites. We have the carpenter ants, the acrobat ants and odorous house ants. Those are the three ones, oh, and I want to throw in pavement ants with that. Those are the top ones that we see that we're dealing with.

Richard Piet:

Well, I can tell you, I see the pavement ones and I'll tell you about that as we move along. Carpenter ants, though these ones can be a little scary because they like wood and they chew on it.

Amber Byars:

Carpenter ants are considered the wood-destroying insect. They are one of the top pests that we see when we are doing a lot of our inspections for our real estate friends. That actually goes on the state forum to be kind of a critical pest when people are buying homes. So yeah, they're the larger black ant. They prefer the moist, decaying wood. They don't eat wood, which is a common misperception. They just utilize the wood as a nesting area and so they kind of like their name carpenter. They will kind of excavate that wood and create galleries inside of it, unlike termites right who are actually consuming that cellulose material. And then some of the signs we see associated with carpenter ants are going to be that frass that gets kicked out of those galleries. When they're excavating that wood looks like kind of like wood shavings and then the hollow wood that's left behind afterwards and sometimes you can actually see the live winged reproductives, the live larger ants with wings.

Richard Piet:

So they're just making a nice ant condo.

Amber Byars:

Yeah, exactly.

Richard Piet:

Out of your condo.

Amber Byars:

Out of our structure. They're making their own little homes.

Richard Piet:

Yeah, they're very appreciative, I'm sure. So I'm really curious about acrobat ants. What are they? Gymnasts or something? Are they tumbling? What are they doing?

Amber Byars:

Yeah, the funny thing is they get that name because when they're disturbed their abdomen kind of flexes up and kind of bends up towards their thorax and their head, so it gives this little cute acrobatic movement. That's how they got that name. They're a smaller ant. They have a characteristic that can differentiate them from any other ant and it's a diamond shaped abdomen. So that last segment on the ant will have a nice pointed tip, almost kind of heart shaped but a little diamond shape, and they also will nest in rotting wood. And we can see signs of them by getting pieces of any part of the structure that they're nesting in getting kicked out. I've seen a lot of spray foam insulation or just foam board insulation getting chewed up and then kicked out of little galleries. That's going to be the top sign of an acrobat ant infestation.

Richard Piet:

So they like to nest also, like the carpenters do. They just don't necessarily choose wood.

Amber Byars:

Yeah, they can do some damage to wooden structural components.

Richard Piet:

And that's a good point with carpenter, ants and acrobats, right that the damage they do could cross a threshold, to a point where you have, dare I say, structural damage. I mean, does it go that far?

Amber Byars:

Oh, it definitely can. I would say, more so with the carpenter ants, because they have much larger colonies and they're much larger and I've seen damage related to carpenter ants over an acrobat ant. But acrobat ants are messy and, again, because of their nature of nesting in wood, they're technically an arboreal ant.

Richard Piet:

All right. What other species do we focus on? You had a couple that you thought of immediately.

Amber Byars:

Odorous house ants and pavement ants. And again, these are on the smaller side of the ant, but odorous house ants are probably one of the most common that we see in structurally infesting, where clients are calling and saying I got these tiny little ants all over my kitchen. Those are typically odorous house ants. They have a characteristic why they smell really bad. If you pinch one and smell it, it's going to have like a rotten coconut smell when it's crushed. So it's not frowned upon.

Richard Piet:

People do this across the industry, so it's a means of confirming what you're looking at. I guess that reminds me of stink bugs, but that's a whole other conversation, I guess.

Amber Byars:

Yes, yes sir.

Richard Piet:

So you mentioned pavement ants, so here's what I see. When it gets to be springtime, all of a sudden, out of the crack of the driveway, there will be a sand mound and a zillion of them Coming out of there. Is that a pavement ant?

Amber Byars:

There could be some other species that do that, but generally speaking, yes, pavement ants are going to be the ones that are pushing that soily, dirt, sandy dirt up through those cracks around the pavement slabs right near the home, and so they can pop up inside the garage, like right at that strip in the garage, and they will enter the structure and they can be structurally nesting if they find like a nice area inside of a wall void or something too.

Richard Piet:

That's a little scary to contemplate. Do they cause damage?

Amber Byars:

They do not no.

Richard Piet:

Okay, they're just making a mess, hanging out like their cousins do and making themselves comfortable.

Amber Byars:

Yes, exactly.

Richard Piet:

Why do they suddenly all emerge and you'll see a bunch of them and that sand, and then they'll just be gone again. It's like they come out for some air and go back in.

Amber Byars:

Yeah, foraging also could be weather related. But, yeah, definitely looking for resources, and that's, generally speaking, for any ant. We get a lot of questions about you know why do I have ants? And I wonder if my neighbor is dealing with this and like, really ants are just foraging creatures. So they will seek out resources, whether that's food, water, shelter, and so they are going to be doing that behavior. When you're seeing a trail of ants, that's what they're doing. They're looking for something that is going to be beneficial for them.

Richard Piet:

All right. How do you spot an ant infestation?

Amber Byars:

Typically it's going to be the live ants, the trailing ants and, based off of the species like we were talking about earlier, you might see signs associated with that specific species. For example, carpenter ants you're going to see the piles of sawdust, acrobat ants. You can also see that debris getting kicked out of, maybe near an electrical unit, because again that's where some of that spray foam insulation is going to be. And then odorous house ants. They have long trails so, and they're going to be going from a place of their nesting and to the food source or the water source or something that's spilled. So especially like sweet material, syrupy material, stuff like that.

Richard Piet:

So there'll be like a little super highway following each other back and forth.

Amber Byars:

Yeah, exactly and that. And they can also be in really weird spots like up underneath the lip of the cabinet, the splashback of the sink, you know. So they'll be crawling back there. And if you have a nice colored marble top counter, that might be really hard to see until all of a sudden you're like, wow, there's so many.

Richard Piet:

Here they are. Is that typically what happens? There's something sweet they like that attracts them, and there they are, and maybe we don't see them right away until they've told two friends, and so on and so on, as the old commercial used to say.

Amber Byars:

Yeah, because we have to remember that, even though they don't have voices like us, they still communicate, and they will communicate with pheromones, and so they're going to be communicating back and forth between touch and pheromone scent. Hey, come this way. There's a food source here, right?

Richard Piet:

Hey guys over here, yeah, like that.

Amber Byars:

Exactly. And there you go. You got that trail started.

Richard Piet:

They're very good communicators, All right. So what happens now? Someone calls you and says I have ants. How do you approach it?

Amber Byars:

We touched on our integrated pest management model. A couple of weeks ago.

Amber Byars:

So we perform every service under that umbrella. So first we're going to start off with a thorough inspection. We're going to make sure that we know exactly what we're dealing with, where the ants are coming from, what kind of ants they are, and sometimes we might not know the exact species, but we're going to at least know an appropriate amount about that specific ant before we move forward. Once we determine nesting sites and ant species, we're going to then move forward typically with like a bait.

Amber Byars:

We try to start with gel baits or granular baits try to get some control of the colony. That does a couple of things. One, it's low impact on the environment, so we utilize gel baits for specific species. That's kind of got more of a sweeter kind of build to it. And then we also have like a protein-based bait. It's a granular bait that's really good for other um the field and the carpenter ants. But we'll try to gel bait the colony first and get control that way, and some combination spot treatments with an appropriately labeled pesticide. And so we'll utilize those two methods and typically within a couple of weeks of doing that, once we've done the thorough inspection and determined the nesting sites, and then we applied the appropriate products, we see success after about two weeks. Sometimes with larger colonies and we're talking the odorous house ants and the carpenter ants that process can be elongated a little bit because the colony is large when you say gel bait, this means that they are feasting on that and bringing it back to the colony.

Richard Piet:

Is that right?

Amber Byars:

yeah. So here's some really cool uh facts about ants. Adult ants cannot chew or swallow solid foods. When we're talking like the gel bait, they can consume that fully. They can ingest it, swallow it, and the way that they pass that is through excretions. With the larger granular baits that's a solid material. They will capture that and then carry it back in their mandibles to their larval stage inside the colony. So the larval stage is inside the colony. The queen's protecting those, keeping them safe. The worker ants will bring that solid food back and feed it to the larva, which have chewing mouth parts. So the larva will actually eat that and then they will have excretions that the adults will eat and that's how that material gets shared between the colony.

Richard Piet:

Boy, did you know that about ants? That's incredible. So it does its job. All you have to do is introduce them to that and away it goes.

Amber Byars:

And introduce enough of it. That's a really common misperception that people have, especially industry-wide, where they don't use enough bait. The colony's mature, you're going to need 60 to 90 grams of bait and it comes in sometimes comes in very small application tubes, so people use just a couple of grams at a time and then they'll see treatment failure.

Richard Piet:

Okay. One thing to think about, though. We could probably try and prevent them to begin with. Is that a good thought?

Amber Byars:

There's definitely ways to prevent certain ant infestations Absolutely.

Richard Piet:

So a couple of weeks and they're out with the appropriate amount of treatment and then going forward after that. What should we, as homeowners or building managers, do to prevent a recurrence?

Amber Byars:

Anything that's attractive, kind of out of reach for ants, is one of those key components.

Amber Byars:

So making sure that you don't have a lot of crumbs or you know spilled soda or you know maple syrup stuff, stuff like that kind of sprinkled around, you want to keep those, keep it nice and clean and sanitized. Keeping your food materials in locked containers, kind of out of reach to be accessed, of reach to be accessed. Fixing any type of moisture issue, because ants are always going to be attracted to areas of moisture because they need that water source and with carpenter ants they are more attracted to decayed wood. So if there's some sort of leak causing wood decay or wood rot, that's going to be an attractive area for those ants to nest. Sealing up entry points to keeping your doors and windows closed tight, because if you're having those open regularly, that's just an opening for them to come into. Trimming back tree branches, vegetation, overgrown vegetation that's going to be contacting the structure is basically like a superhighway bridge for ants to access. And then the last thing would be to have regular inspections and or treatments preventatively in the future.

Richard Piet:

All right. So before we go, what's the number one piece of advice for homeowners dealing with ants?

Amber Byars:

I would say to definitely contact a professional. The thing about over-the-counter treatment is it will work for a short period of time, maybe it's going to kill some of the worker ants, but it's not going to get to the colony. A lot of those over-the-counter products have a permethrin-based product in it, which is a repellent, and it's going to kill on contact, but it's not going to transfer. And another thing I would recommend is to hire a company that's going to do those thorough inspections prior to treatment so that they know exactly what they're dealing with.

Richard Piet:

And ask them what their approach is.

Amber Byars:

Yeah, exactly.

Richard Piet:

Very good, all right. So there you are. If you're dealing with ants, don't wait. Reach out to someone preferably Pest Pros and Amber. Reach out to Pest Pros and Amber they can help for sure, and take care of that assessment, do the integrated pest management approach and help you eliminate the infestation. In fact, we did talk with Amber about IPM integrated pest management in a prior episode. So subscribe to Pest Perspectives so you're alerted when those come up, and then you see the list of prior episodes that we have recorded and deployed so you can hear about that too. Amber Byars, thank you for this info.

Amber Byars:

Of course. Thank you so much.