Ants!  No bug epitomizes the mob mentality more than ants, especially the local Argentine ant.  Chances are if you are reading this, your home is being invaded by these particularly invasive and overwhelming pests.  Their evolutionary prowess makes them spectacularly effective foragers of food and colonizers, which is good news for them and their survival, but REALLY bad news for you and your kitchen, bathroom, restaurant, or home, and Santa Clarita has a VERY healthy dose of these unwelcome invaders.

To understand why they are so invasive, you must know a little first about their biology and how it relates to their success in Santa Clarita and southern California.  Heralding from the jungles of Argentina and Paraguay, the Argentine Ant (Argentinian Ant) is wholly unique to the animal kingdom in a way second only to humans.  Unlike most ant species, which have individual nests, with individual queens and individual foraging zones, the Argentine ant colony has multiple nests linked together in “super-colonies”, multiple queens, and multiple foraging zones.  In the rest of the ant kingdom, the average black ant worker from colony A may never stray into the foraging area of black ant colony B for fear of being attacked… Not so with the Argentine Ant.

Argentine ants are completely cooperative.  Workers from multiple sites will forage for food and bring it back to the nest and then they will mutually digest their food.  Food foraged in area A will get stored in sub-colony B and, if needed, get fed to the queen of sub colony C, without any competition. Slowly, all the sub colonies connect through their mutual cooperation and spread,  establishing what we call a “super-colony.”  Entomologists (bug-scientists) have confirmed that these super-colonies can spread over hundreds of miles.  In fact, using fluorescent isotopes, scientists have injected argentine ant nests in Italy and seen the dye show up in ants in Portugal within a couple of weeks, confirming that all the Argentine Ants along the Mediterranean coast are ONE HUGE COLONY!

Further research indicates that the world has 3 of these Mega-Colonies, the 6,000 Kilometer long Meditteranean Colony, the 900km Southern California Colony, and the mega colony that occupies the western coast of the Japanese Islands.  It gets even better… further entomological research shows these colonies are so genetically similar that scientists suspect that all three of these colonies are ONE GLOBAL MEGALONY!

So… what does this have to do with you and all the ants in your kitchen in Santa Clarita?

Treatment Options

Fortunately, Unipest specializes in organic, low impact, and traditional pest control solutions that effectively remove these ants from your living space, but before we show up to treat your property, there are some things you can do to help yourself out.

1. Make sure excess water is controlled – Everybody thinks that argentine ants invade kitchens looking for food, and though this is true sometimes, generally, in Santa Clarita, Argenitine Ants are attacking kitchens for their moistuyre, not their food, so any plumbing leaks, excessive irrigation, or open animal water should be controlled.
2. Get rid of Aphids on plants – A major source of glucose for Argentine Ants is the secretions of aphids and scale insects on shrubs and plants.  They will actually corral the scale insects like cowboys herded cattle in the 1800’s to cultivate their milk and meat. You can actually remove aphids and scale insects from plants by hand, but  if that’s not your cup of tea, you can always sign up for regular pest control service with Unipest.
3. Eliminate proteins – Just like human diets, insects need a mixture of sugars, amino acids, carbohydrates, and proteins.  They can actually consume a cricket in 8 minutes!  So eliminating excess proteins available to the colony will reduce their desire to invade your home!
4. Use soap and water – Common soap and water can remove the pheromone trails ants use to follow each other into your house.  This is only a temporary fix, but will buy you some time before we show up to perform your regular pest control service (link)

Finally, REGULAR GENERAL PEST CONTROL is recommended for long-term peace of mind against Argentine Ant invasion.  All Organic options based upon essential oils are available, however, in the hottest months of summer, eco-friendly products like Termidor are effective against  Argentine Ants because they return with the active ingredient Fipronil to the colony, share it with their colony-members, and eliminate up to 99.3% of the colony within a couple of weeks. Unipest uses all EPA-approved products and all our treatment protocols are designed with the health and safety of your family and pets in mind so you can rest assured that bugs will be kept out of your home without excessive use of “harsh chemicals”.

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