Welcome to the ATX Pest Podcast, episode 6, ants. Ants are the most common issue that everyone deals with. It’s the number one call that a pest control company gets, been that way for many years and will always continue to be that. Ants are a big nuisance, especially here in the South with the fire ants, with the fire ants, some people can be highly allergic to them. You, unfortunately. You know it’s fairly rare. You unfortunately don’t know until you have unfortunately been bitten or stung and yes, they can bite and sting. Most people don’t know that and you have an allergic reaction. Hopefully, hopefully, you don’t go in athletic shock. I actually had a customer the other day, her son-in-law, from a different country. Um, I just never, from France, actually never had pest control service, didn’t really have any interest in it, didn’t have a need in France, I guess, um, and then he was doing a little bit of gardening this past weekend and was bitten, stung or whatnot by a fire ant and had to go to the hospital. Didn’t go into shock but got sick enough and probably now carries an EpiPen the rest of his life right. So she called me and said I need your help. Let’s, uh, I’ll pay for the first service he’s gonna take it, would take it from there and we’re gonna go help them out, get him get rid of these, help control these fire ants for him because he desperately needs it and it’s, you know, we have a few customers that children or, cut you know, adults that are allergic to them. We’ve actually done special treatments at schools, daycares, because of there’s a child had parents. Literally the school wouldn’t pay for it on one situation one year and the parents paid for us to go there, along with their house. Of course I gave them a big break on price because they’re just very expensive to do a special treatment. There’s a product called Top Choice. It’s a very effective product. It’s very pricey though it’s agricultural grade. It requires to have a special license in order to even purchase it, so homeowners aren’t able to get their hands on it, but it’s very effective. A lot of us pest control companies offer that service. We’ll refer to it as a top-place treatment.
The active ingredient is Fipronil. Fipronil is what is in different termiticides, but especially most people would recognize flea and like front line, like flea and tick collars. Minute amount in that actually, of course, but you know we put a flea collar on the dog and it’s active ingredient is Fipronil, So it’s a very well-known and used active ingredient and very effective actually, and it’s the premier choice for doing any type of liquid application for termites. If you have termites or you’re doing something preventative for termites. If you have them, if you have termites or you’re doing something preventative for termites, it’s you’re using a, doing a trench and treat liquid. Or they kind of dig around your house and dig a trench and they do a liquid application. Or if you already unfortunately have in your wall voids a little foam with termite aside, that’s the active ingredient fipronil is. Some companies will use other versions, like an imidacloprid or a couple other different types of bifenthrin, which I don’t recommend. But you want to use fipronil. In my opinion, that’s all we use. It’s the best and you can get your best results. So, anyways, there’s a granular application. It’s a full yard treatment. We do special treatments for that at my company and there’s a multitude application. It’s a full yard treatment. We do special treatments for that at my company and there’s a multitude of other companies that do the same treatment as well. It’s very effective. I do it at my own house and because I have dogs and I don’t want my dogs being bit up by fire ants. But the other thing is too, us companies don’t guarantee it, but it does help quite a bit. As well as other species of ants it can affect them in a positive manner, meaning it can help kill them and control them. But fleas and ticks, it can help out with that quite a bit too. So pet owners, it’s a good treatment to get done. So pet owners, it’s a good treatment to get done. It takes a few weeks to bond with the soil and from that point forward you shouldn’t really have hardly any activity. It happens pop up around trees and things like bases of trees once in a while and you know company’s going to warrant it and come back and treat it. So, anyways, that’s always a very viable option. Otherwise, you know, pest control companies, we’re in general, we’re, you know, we’re warranting for fire ant mounds, just because everybody does, and it’s just kind of the nature of the beast, unfortunately for us. You think it would be a more appropriate situation if you had a pest control service and all companies across the board said look, we’re only treating or warranting the areas that we treat. I mean, you know we’re warranting to the back fence of, like you know, within reason of a size of a property, and we’ll walk that property further out than our you know, typical five to ten foot barrier that us companies, by law, because of the fall labels of the products that we utilize, are applying. So, of course, if there’s a fire ant mound 25 feet away from the house, you know, 15, 20, 30 feet outside of that treatment barrier that we’re reestablishing every time we come on a bi-monthly or quarterly basis, we we’re gonna take care, we’re gonna spot, treat and take care of that. It’s kind of a funny thing, though to, you know, have a warranty to go back and treat an area.
A fire ant mama popped up when we did nothing to help prevent their prevent that in that spot. How do you, why would you warranty that? But you know that’s just the way Somebody did it to try to undercut the competition, to get more customers years ago, and it just stuck and now it’s become a universal practice for all of us companies. So unfortunately for us, because it hurts us considerably getting called back to a house for free like that. But it is what it is, we’re happy to do it and it’s just the nature of the business. So there’s a lot of other things like that, that, and you just have to deal with it. So, but that’s the reality. Okay, the expectations with fire ant mounds is that you’re always going to get them, okay, unless you do something, a specialized treatment, like the top dress that we spoke about. Right, that’s going to be the expectation. We can only treat them as they come. Typically, you get a lot of rain and you know weather’s favorable. You know, all of a sudden, you get that dirt mound. Now you ask yourself, why do I get that dirt mound? Well, because what’s happening is you have a change in climate temperature, humidity, whatnot? Moisture. They are bringing. Those workers are going to bring those eggs to the surface and create that dirt mound. Essentially, what they’re doing is creating an incubator to protect their eggs. Okay, so that’s the reason they do it. Otherwise, they’re going to be 50-plus feet underneath the ground typically, and they can go pretty far. They can go pretty deep in the ground. It’s pretty amazing, actually, what they can do, but they can be very dangerous. They hurt no matter what. Whether you’re allergic or not. You don’t want to get bitten by one or stung by one. So fire ants suck, and then there’s a couple other species that we deal with. I’m not going to talk about every ant species, but I’m going to basically hit on the top three Fire ants. Number one they can bite or sting, so that’s a no-no. So that’s always something to be concerned about more than anything. That’s a no-no. So that’s always something to be concerned about more than anything.
Acrobat ants, which are the most misidentified ant there is. People think they’re carpenter ants. All the time and oftentimes, including fire ants, get in wall voids like acrobats as well and they can kind of kick out like some debris what we call frass and debris dirt, and it looks like the remnants look like oh my god, I got, I’ve got carpenter ants, which in fact is pretty rare on this area. I’ve only seen them a handful of times and treat them a handful of times. They are it’s, they are around, but you don’t see them often I would say probably 95% of the time when someone says I have carpenter ants, we go to the house and it’s acrobat ants or some cases it’s been fire ants as well. So acrobats are pretty cool looking, you know, like red and get a black. I won’t get all technical, but get a black and get a thorax gaster and all that the guy is is their rear end okay, looks like a spay, like a teardrop, it’s black in color and they, uh, it’s pretty neat. They have like a little defense mechanism. If you see them, um, trailing around and you go to disturb them, they’ll raise their rear end up in the air. And that’s kind of how they got like kind of like, uh, the acrobat name, uh, it’s because it’s kind of like a Tumblr, you know, like acrobatic, so they’ll, they’ll raise that rear end and you won’t smell it unless you get near a large colony and disturb a colony. But I have smelt it a couple times. They’ll give off a really pungent smell, but you’re not going to smell that by just a few trailing and disturbing a few of them. But if you have a good amount of them, you get near their colony. It’s possible. If you smell a nasty smell, that’s what you’re smelling. Um, it’s a. It’s pretty rare that you get the opportunity to smell it. I’ve only I’ve only encountered that a couple of times in my career actually. So one time was actually in the attic, which is a rare place to find them nested like they were in a whole colony, but in fact I did find that one years ago actually, but it was actually pretty cool. It was easy to treat though. I was able to contact and kill them pretty quickly. But you’ll see them trailing, often like on fences they’re the ones trailing on railings, fence posts, you know on your house, going up your house and you see a whole line of them. They’re big time trailers and they’ll trail. They’ll get into gutters and leaf debris. Keep your gutters clean. That is a big conducive area for them. Any type of moisture and of course, you know, and moisture on the house around the yard clutter firewood. Get rid of that, you know. Clean it up, leaf debris, all that you know. This goes this goes without saying for multitude of different pests that I’ve talked about in the past and we’ll always continue to harp on this, because that’s just harborage and moisture and creates food for them and it’s just ideal conditions. What they, it’s what they’re seeking for, that’s what they need and they have that. They’re going to be on your property and you’re going to have them. I have acrobat ants, literally um, on my patio right now because I haven’t I haven’t done a treatment in the probably about a month and a half it’s that time of year um, I need to do treatment. I can actually see your acrobat ants trailing right now um in my front yard on the patio, and that’s that’s where I am right now, just walking around talking to ya’ll. But, um, if you ever cut down a live oak tree and that’s primarily I have a lot of trees on our property, so if you ever cut down a live oak tree, you’d be surprised the most. Almost every live oak tree is full of them. Um, we redid our fences a couple years ago. Um put a put some, you know, had to, had to remove some of the rotted wood and and replace it two by sixes and whatnot, and it was just plumb full of of acrobat ants. So, um, they’re always around. So, pest control companies, we do our best. Obviously we have specific baits for them that we can bait around conducive areas like that, and by doing our treatment, creating our barriers, you know, we can keep them under control um pretty well. So not a big deal there. And then the other most common one that we get inside the house um, is the little, the little black ants. They’re actually called rover ants, r-o-v-e-r. That’s the most common ant that we deal with other than fire ants. Really, they’re number two on the list, really, um, and you know they’ll get pushed in from weather. They’re forging for food. Keep the crumbs up, dog dishes up, you know. Keep everything sanitized as well as possible and even then you might get them.
Oftentimes they can get into the wall voids after rain and moisture and you know, especially if you have leaf debris, keep it all, you know. Take all that aside. Let’s say you have a perfect landscape, but they get in your wall void. So pest control company comes and does a service or you’re spraying yourself and what happens is we can’t always detect every single little bug where everything is right. So what happens is they end up getting pushed inside the house and now you have rover ants that kind of got pushed in. They’re already, were in your wall voids, but now you they’re popping up in your kitchen and pantry or something of that effect, and our room, whatnot. That happens throughout the year. We get year. We’ll get several calls after a service, a few days, after a week, after a couple days, after next day. Sometimes, hey, I got some ants inside. You guys, we’re just here. It happens. We try to make very sound, good choices with the products that we’re utilizing, the active ingredients and that we’re utilizing and since we switched the product that we’ve been using for the last couple years on our liquid application that we do like on foundation entry points, I can say that we’ve cut that down in half, which is huge. So customers are experiencing a lot less and issues. You know so, and that’s just the nature of the beast and that’s why pest control companies we all any good company app, you know, gotta guarantee your work. You get a warranty because, yes, we’re gonna come out every three months or every two months and and do maintenance services, re-establish barriers and whatnot, but it’s, you know, nothing’s foolproof. You’re going to, unfortunately, you know, get an issue here and there and that’s okay, that’s what you pay for. Call that company, get ants inside. Ants inside is really one of the only reasons that you need interior pest control and I’ll do a podcast on that one these days on why interior services are not really that necessary. Seal your damn house up. I preach it every day. I’ll get into that. I’ve probably already talked about that a little bit on the podcast, but I’ll do a very in-depth one on what I’m talking about with that in the future. But as far as ants go, those are the three major ones. The issue is that oftentimes you spray. If you spray a certain product, like a contact cure, like Raid, or your company’s not using a non-repellent type product, what happens is they’re giving off a pheromone that alerts the colony. They do it for multiple reasons. In this case it would be danger and they can break off what we call like budding and they’ll start a secondary satellite colony. And now you have ants in a different portion of your home, inside, or you know, and it’s just just much more difficult to take care of. It makes the problem worse and and it’ll kind of can’t. If you’re spraying a raid or anything like that after your pest control company because you think you’re helping the situation, think again. Please don’t do that. You’re canceling out that product. Essentially, you’re making the problem worse. So be careful of that. Don’t buy Raid. If you’re going to be a do-it-yourselfer, there’s better options Call me. I can tell you a couple of things that you can, that you can purchase on your own and you know, as long as you’re doing that safely and you and I come to conclusion, you’re going to you’re, you’re, you’re competent and understand what you’re doing. I will give some free, sound advice on stuff like that. But you know, give some free, sound advice on stuff like that. But you know, primarily with these things you need to just have a pest control service. You know the reality of it is. It’s not just this ant problem. One time that you might have Lost nests are building up scorpions, fire ants, all the earwigs, seasonal pests, all these different issues. You get a pest control service for a few hundred dollars a year. You’re covered for all that. They’re going to come to your home regularly. You know.
If you don’t have a company, I suggest you look into one. What they have to offer. Try to find a full service company. You want us, you want me to help? Call me, I have a company. I’ll be obviously glad to help you guys out, give you a free quote, but don’t have to choose me. There’s a few other good companies out there. So hire one of them, crying out loud, take your home and your yard back and don’t worry about these, these, these pests, um, in all these different situations, and you don’t have to worry about having to fool with it yourself and you’ll have a warranty. Just to you know, there’s just some things that I feel like you need to hire for and let the experts handle, and everyone thinks they can go pick up a product from home depot and do their own pest control. But they’re. That’s not the case, not what you know. They think that about us. I guess some people think that we’re just you know, whatever. But we don’t get a. We’re like Ronnie Dangerfield. We don’t get a lot of respect sometimes and neither do lawn people, um, you know. But we, we have a great amount of knowledge and experience and there’s a multitude of different products that are right to use and there’s, you know, depends on species and of of ants.
You know what. What bait do I use for this? What equipment, what application, liquid or gel bait or granular bait? I mean, there’s a multitude of things that you need to know and to, most importantly, do the job safely. So if you have any questions on any of that I hope this helps I’m here. You can give me a call, like always 512-588-2998. There again, I really appreciate ya’ll listening to me babble. Once again. I will hopefully come up with something good for next week, episode seven. Ya’ll be good.
