Red ants in the apartment

At different times of the year and in different regions of the country in an apartment, and even more so in a private house, you can often meet representatives of various types of ants. Very often, ants in an apartment are random guests brought in on clothes or with things. Among them are insects of different sizes and colors.

However, the real pest in the apartment is only the so-called pharaoh ant - an independent species of heat-loving small ants, which in our latitudes, in addition to heated residential premises, cannot live anywhere. These red ants in the apartment are a real problem: they are numerous, spoil food, can carry pathogens of various diseases, and besides, they are removed with great difficulty.

Typical apartment ants differ from most of their relatives by their very small size - about 2 mm in length, light brown or reddish body color and low speed of movement. In addition, small ants in an apartment are usually very numerous and catch the eye of whole detachments moving along special paths.

Large red ants in the apartment are random guests, they usually meet one by one and run so fast that it is very difficult to catch them.

On a note

The most reliable sign of a pharaoh ant is its activity in winter. Already at zero temperature on the street, all domestic ants go to anthills for wintering. And if an ant is found indoors this season, it is definitely a pest.

In the photo - apartment ants in the nest. The large ant in the center is the uterus:

In one colony of domestic ants, several dozen queens and up to 350,000 workers can live.

The reasons for the fact that red ants appear in an apartment, although not numerous, can be found in almost any home. That is why small red ants successfully conquer more and more new areas and with a high probability can appear in any apartment, even the cleanest one.

On a note

White or transparent ants are not found in the apartment. Among adult ants, there are no insects with this color at all. White ants in an apartment can only be found in the anthill itself - a newborn ant that has just emerged from the cocoon has a soft, light shell for the first few hours of life. But in Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan there are termites that actually have a white body color. So those people who talk about white ants in their homes are usually actually dealing with termites.

 

How do ants get into the apartment

Considering the reasons for the appearance of ants in an apartment, one should separately talk about wild ants - the inhabitants of gardens, fields and forests - and domestic, pharaoh ants.

Forest red ants, large black field reaper ants or slender garden black ants appear in the apartment by chance and for several reasons:

1. They are accidentally brought on clothes or equipment from the street. In this case, it cannot be said that ants appeared in the apartment: meetings with such aliens are rare, and they will not be able to survive indoors for a long time.
2. Ants can wander into the apartment from the street in search of food. In this case, insects also do not populate the premises: their nest remains on the street, and only foragers looking for food enter the apartment.

In the first case, no measures can be taken at all, and the found ant or several simply should be thrown out the window. The second situation is more complicated: if street ants are found regularly in the apartment, you need to do everything necessary to eliminate the places of their entry into the room. For example:

• trace through which cracks the insects enter the apartment, and caulk them
• to process with special means boxes of doors and windows
• check the floors on the balconies, the ventilation shafts and the points of entry and exit of pipes into the apartment - it is possible that ants enter the room from neighbors. Found "gates" are treated with insecticides or smeared with putty.

Review

“Ants never get in our apartment. But the husband, as he returns from the apiary once a week, several pieces constantly crawl out of his bag and clothes. And sometimes earwigs with claws and odorous green bugs. A whole zoo in short. I just throw them out the window."

Allah, Tula

Another thing is if small ants appeared in the apartment, sometimes caught in the eye by whole columns.There is no need to wonder why they suddenly decided to occupy the apartment: human housing is the only suitable habitat for them, here they look for food and breed.

It is much more reasonable to find out where the ants in the apartment come from: you may have to cooperate with your neighbors to fight them, and after removing them, cut off the ways of re-entering the room.

So where do ants come from in an apartment? There may be several options:

• from neighboring apartments
• from front doors, garbage chutes and dryers
• from cellars
• from the establishments attached to the house
• from a remote location on a person’s clothes or with various household items - in this case, only an accidental “traveling uterus” can start a new colony, and therefore this path is the most rare.

The spread of ants is the key to the survival of their colonies. Moreover, in a pharaoh ant, one colony with nests connected to each other can be located on several floors of a house in dozens of apartments.

In the photo - red ants on the so-called "forage" trail. Worker ants carry food to the nest along these paths:

Review:

“The first time I noticed ants about six months ago. A few pieces in the bathroom. I was not particularly worried, because I had never had them at home before. Ants started up in the apartment about a month later: first, in dozens, and then in whole packs, they ran around the kitchen, along the baseboards, along the balcony, even met them in the bedroom. I didn’t know at all before where ants could appear in the apartment. Started to figure it out, it turned out that the neighbors had the same problem. And this is in a house that was commissioned a year ago! We found out that all the ants came from the supermarket at the house.Moreover, the supermarket administration itself poisoned them two months ago, and their descendants have already divorced in our apartments.

Inna, Ulyanovsk

 

What attracts ants indoors?

All the ants need in an apartment is food and warmth.

As natives of tropical Asia and North Africa, brown, red or yellow ants in the apartment are very thermophilic: they cannot live and breed at temperatures below 15 ° C. That is why this species does not occur naturally in our country. Yes, and in the apartment, ants start up only by moving from another room or by being accidentally brought on clothes.

Review:

“I can’t imagine where the ants come from in the apartment. We have a fine mesh for ventilation, reliable doors, PVC windows. Not a single gap anywhere. Followed them, they all run behind the plinth. But we also put the skirting boards after the repair, there were no gaps under them ... "

Anna, St. Petersburg

In addition, small red ants start up in the apartment when scouts from nearby nests regularly bring food from the premises. This is already a signal for insects that the apartment will be a great place for a new colony.

On a note

There are cases when in a house completely infested with ants, one or two apartments were completely free of them. As it turned out, perfect cleanliness was constantly maintained in these rooms, and the ants simply could not find food.

An additional factor that will make the apartment even more attractive to colonizers is the presence of a sufficient number of places for arranging nests - holes, crevices, blockages of old things. However, even without this, small yellow ants in an apartment can quite successfully populate the room.

The photo below shows domestic ants in their nest:

 

Are ants dangerous in an apartment?

Small ants in an apartment do not pose a direct danger to a person: they do not bite and do not cause allergies. Even fairly vicious forest ants that accidentally get into the room are unlikely to cause serious trouble. But they can also bite quite sensitively.

However, red ants in an apartment can cause some harm:

• they spoil the food and transfer dirt from other rooms to them. It is especially dangerous if the same individuals move between garbage chutes and kitchens.
• Small red ants in an apartment can be carriers of pathogens of dangerous diseases. For example, eggs of worms were found on the paws of ants, and it is theoretically possible for ants to carry the plague pathogen.
• Ants constantly take out garbage from their nest to special "dumps" hidden behind skirting boards, carpets, plaster - in general, in inaccessible places. There accumulate the remains of the bodies of dead ants, uneaten food, excrement. Such dumps are an ideal place for the development of molds and flea larvae. As a result, red ants help other pests to live.

In general, small ants in an apartment are a sign and one of the factors of unsanitary conditions. This alone is dangerous and can contribute to the deterioration of the hygienic condition of the home. And therefore, at the very first meetings with them, it is necessary to begin a serious and systematic struggle.

 

Ants fight

Ants are one of the most difficult pests to control due to their centralized location and large number of nests, high fecundity and the ability to feed on a huge variety of foods.

However, you can fight apartment ants.The most famous ways to remove them are:

• call for specialized pest control teams. The method is expensive, but simple: the specialists themselves will come, process the entire room and explain how and when to clean after that.
• The use of insecticidal aerosols is, in fact, doing the work of a specialized service with your own hands. Red ants die from Raptor, Kombat, Off, Raid, from any aerosols against bedbugs.
• The use of insecticidal dusts, gels and sticks - although these products do not give an instant effect, they can be used for a long and systematic persecution of ants indoors.
• Using borax and boric acid to control ants. This is the most famous folk method, consisting in the preparation of poisoned baits.

It is important to remember that the fight against ants in only one apartment is obviously doomed to a temporary effect: even if you destroy all the nests in your room, after a while ants from neighboring apartments will enter the apartment. Reliable results are given only by the cooperation of the efforts of the residents of the house.

To prevent ants from reappearing in the apartment, it is necessary to observe preventive measures to protect against them: maintain cleanliness in the room and do not leave open food on the tables, periodically treat door and window boxes with insecticidal pencils, destroy single scout ants, regularly carry out wet cleaning. With such prevention, the likelihood of pests entering the apartment (including cockroaches) will be minimal.

 

Interesting video: an example of an apartment infested with ants

 

Ants have been tormenting residents of an apartment building for 5 years