Despite their name, sugar ants consume not just sugar and sweets, but other scraps of food at the same time. In actual fact, the term sugar ant is but a misnomer. The real sugar ant is often a native on the Australian continent, and exclusive to that part of the globe. Pavement ants and Pharaoh ants are most often mistakenly referred to as sugar ants, and they take place to be essentially the most abundant ants on the North American continent.

For the purposes of maintaining simplicity in this short article, each Pharaoh and Pavement ants might be referred to as sugar ants.

II. Sugar Ants as Pests

For the duration of early spring, colonies try to conquer new places and usually attack nearby enemy colonies. These lead to massive sidewalk battles, sometimes leaving a huge number of ants dead. Due to the sugar ants' aggressive nature, they frequently invade and colonize seemingly impenetrable locations. In summertime, the ants dig out the sand in among pavement to vent the nests.

Sugar ants will eat practically anything, which includes insects, seeds, honeydew, honey, bread, meats, nuts and cheese. The species will not pose a public well being risk, but can contaminate food and should really be avoided.

Nests is often pretty little; by way of example, they can be located among sheets of paper, in clothes or laundry, inside furniture, inside food, and so on. Nests normally happen in wall voids, beneath floors, behind baseboards, in trash containers, below stones, in cement or stone wall voids, in linens, in light fixtures, and so on.

They choose dark, warm places near hot water pipes and heating tapes, in bathrooms, kitchens, intensive care units, operating rooms, and so on. They are "trail-making" ants and frequently are identified foraging in drains, toilets, washbasins, bedpans as well as other unsanitary web pages, too as in sealed packs of sterile dressing, intravenous drip systems, surgical wounds, and health-related equipment.

III. Basic Sugar Ant Handle

Sugar ant control is very considerably a matter of each day routine throughout the months when sugar ants are a problem (March through September), especially in the kitchen. Under is usually a list of issues you can do to handle sugar ants and avoid a sugar ant infestation inside your home.

* Clean and Dry Kitchen Sink: If you need to handle sugar ants, you must preserve your kitchen sink clean and dry. Sugar ants like dirty sinks and the water you leave them to help wash down the leftovers.

Be sure to rinse out any dishes you are going to leave within the sink more than evening. When you do clean the dishes, be certain you rinse and wipe down the entire sink to produce positive you haven't left residual sweets, food, or moisture behind.

If you're really picky about cleaning, you might even want to try pouring somewhat bleach down the drain to produce sure the smell of rotting food does not attract additional ants to your kitchen. Dish drains also have to be emptied and wiped down ahead of the finish in the day.

* "Bleached" Counter Tops: Wipe down kitchen counter tops with bleach each and every night to have rid of sugar ants. They really like a dirty countertop almost as significantly as they really like a dirty sink. Wiping your countertops with bleach not merely aids sanitize your kitchen, but additionally breaks down the pheromones that ants use to comply with one another to sources of food.

* Mop Your Floor: Sweep and mop your kitchen floor with bleach each night during the summer season to manage sugar ants. It can be within your very best interest to sweep and mop your kitchen floor after every single meal, or no less than once in the evening to create certain any pheromone trails a scout sugar ant has created are not left for other sugar ants to adhere to. Scraps of food and residual sugars are easily swept away having a bucket of warm water and bleach.

* Vacuum Floors: Vacuum the floors of spaces where meals is regularly consumed to avoid inviting sugar ants into your property. Sugar ants also consume bread crumbs, specific types of vegetables and meat, as well as the remains of other pests that may be hiding in your carpet. Ensure that you get all of those factors off your carpet if you want to obtain rid of sugar ants.

* Taking out the Trash: Use powerful garbage bags and take the trash out routinely to avoid sugar ant infestations. It is generally the case that a garbage bag gets punctured, dripping fruit juice or some other type of liquid onto the floor when you are taking out the trash.

Be sure to make use of sturdy garbage bags, even garbage bags that use Arm & Hammer baking soda to deodorize themselves. It goes without saying that taking out the trash on regular basis will reduce the chances of sugar ants finding their way into your kitchen.