Managing and Controlling Odorous House Ants

Odorous House Ant Prevention

First and foremost, taking the right steps to prevent an Odorous House Ant infestation will be the most effective way to manage them. Those steps include:

• keeping vegetation away from the immediate vicinity of buildings,
• preventing wood-soil contact and wet mulch adjacent to home,
• ventilating to prevent moisture build-up,
• stacking wood off the ground and away from buildings,
• repairing leaks in roofs and gutters,
• and finding and repairing leaks in structure.

If you’ve identified that you have an Odorous House Ant infestation, the information below will help in managing and controlling the problem.

Managing Odorous House Ants

The truth is that it is critical the right treatment be performed for all Odorous House Ant infestations. If incorrectly treated, the ants will spread, which is why a trained pest management professionals is your best alternative for managing Odorous House Ants.  Determining the best treatment begins with correctly answering a few basic questions:

• Where are the ants actually living?
• Where are they coming from and going?
• Where are they feeding (and upon what)?
• If the Odorous House Ants are actually living in the building, are there any structural problems that are contributing to the ant problem (moisture problems, tree limbs touching or overhanging the house, etc.).
• How accessible is the nests area for direct treatment?

Ideally, working with a trained, QualityPro certified, pest management professional is the best course of action.

The goal of any Odorous House Ant treatment is to deliver a precise dose of just the right insecticide into just the right place so that the ants will encounter the materials and transport it throughout the colony in the house. It is critical to do this both on the interior and exterior of the structure.

The reality, however, is that even for professionals, finding the actual source of an Odorous House Ant infestation is a challenge, and treatment requires some guesswork, but with the proper training and experience we can control most infestations.

Treating Odorous House Ants Outside Your Home

As noted earlier most infestations originate from the outside. Treatment begins by placing a low dose non repellant material around the exterior of the structure and areas where ants are noted entering. The ants will transport this material into the wall voids and other areas where colonies are located. This material is designed not to cause colonies to spread or “node off” and can be applied only by licensed pest management technicians.

Specially designed baits may also be deployed on the exterior depending on the severity of the infestation. Eventually these materials will help control the Odorous House Ants on the interior because as many as half the population is traveling between the interior and exterior of the building. But beware - once Odorous House Ants are in the neighborhood sooner or later they will return. Most people will opt for additional protection once these ants have left the structure.  

Treating Odorous House Ants Inside Your Home

Specially designed baits are critical in controlling these ants on the interior. These baits must be placed in the right areas for the ants to transport them back to the colonies located throughout the structure. Trained technicians can identify where to place these baits and which baits to use depending on the ants feeding preferences. Odorous House Ants are known to be intermittent feeders and will feed primarily at night so their ability to transport enough of the material to be lethal to the all the queens and individual ants may take some time.

The time it takes usually has to do with how many ants are present, how many years you have been dealing with the ants, and if you have been spraying them with anything. In the meantime it is essential that you not disrupt or spray baits or ants while we are treating. The other challenge is baiting while in the winter months, colonies are not as mobile and can move more slowly so that they take a much longer time to introduce the needed bait to be lethal. Once Odorous House Ants are controlled on the interior all efforts should be concentrated on the exterior of the structure.

Additional Information

Odorous House Ants can be one of the most difficult ants to control and most usually takes several applications of baits over several months. The key is to remove the Queens and colonies imbedded in a structure. Be careful of companies offering a “one shot service” as this usually infers high dose older repellant materials placed everywhere. These treatments most often offer temporary relief but have the effect of causing ants to return in greater numbers as the source of the problem (Queens) are not eliminated.     

In this section of the Halt web site you’ll find the following information:

• Odorous House Ants - Habits, Appearance, Diet, etc.
• Odorous House Ant Behavior
• Managing Odorous House Ants
• Pavement Ants - Habits, Appearance, Diet, etc.
• Pavement Ant Behavior
• Managing Pavement Ants