Pest Control St. Louis

Acrobat Ant

Latin Name: Crematogaster ashmeadi

Features: Medium sized, mostly shiny ant with heart shaped stomach that is often bent up over the thorax when ant is disturbed.

Color: Color variable from light reddish brown to brown or black.

Other: Slow to moderately fast moving ant. May forage in tight foraging trails similar to white-footed ant trails, but only acrobat ant bends the abdomen up over the thorax. Acrobat ants also slow to a snails pace than white-footed ants when disturbed.

Habitat: Acrobat Ants are found in the Southeastern United States (Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia and West Virginia), but can be seen in parts of Missouri

Like all ants, the acrobat ants may produce winged, reproductive individuals (males and women) called swarmers. These sexually developed adults emerge from a founded colony, commonly in the fall, to disperse and begin new colonies. The swarmers are harmless, but they can be the first sign of an infestation. Special treatment of swarmers beyond vacuuming or sweeping them up is not required.

Outside the home, you will normally find Acrobat ants in a mixture of dead and decaying wood. Firewood seems to be one of their preferred homes. In all cases, the wood they occupy will be dead. The acrobat ant never inhabits a wholesome or live piece of wood, that is why they like some of the woodworkings around your house. They have a nasty habit of creating cavities in wood, especially if that timber is moist. They will even nest in foam insulation board if weather is right. One way to recognize their encroachment into your wood is to search for sawdust or other frass materials around suspected nest areas.

Several types of small to medium-sized ants are occasional pests around about the home. One of these is named the acrobat ant owing to the direction the worker ants carry their abdomens above the rest of the body as if they were performing a balancing act. Acrobat ants are longer than 1/8th inch. They vary in color from yellowish brown to dark brown, and the heart-shaped abdomen is commonly darker than the remainder of the body. Magnification is required to see a pair of spines on the back edge of the middle section of the body that helps identify this ant from other species. The addiction of the workers to carry their abdomens uphill when they're disturbed is likely the best method to identify this species.

Acrobat ants may nest both outdoors and indoors. Outdoor nests are most often in dead and decaying timber like logs, stumps, dead trees limbs, firewood and hollow tree cavities. They could nest in damp soil beneath leaf litter or rocks. The small worker ants readily enter buildings through fractures around windows and doors and different openings. Trails of workers may be seen moving between the nest and a food source. Acrobat ants feed upon a variety of foods, including other insects and sweets.

When acrobat ants nest indoors they are usually inside wood or cavities kept moist with water from leaks. They can also nest in foam heat retaining board or sheathing. As they excavate the large galleries used as nest sites, sawdust can be deposited near the nest area.

How to Get Rid of Acrobat Ants?

As reported by a Pest Control company in St. Louis, acrobat ants entering from outdoors may be managed by sealing the outside crevices through which they enter, using a residual insecticide barrier along the foundation, or by treating the ant nest if the location can be determined through careful inspection and observation.

Ant colonies living within the walls should be treated by eliminating any moisture problems (if present) and by injecting household insecticide spray or dust into infested wall voids. An exterminator may take care of this or for small problems, you can do it yourself. It may be essential to drill small holes to accomplish this therapy.

Insecticides containing pyrethroids are around for homeowners for outdoor use. Always follow labeled directs.

Go to your local retail merchant to locate a ready-to-use insecticide labeled for ants. Read and follow the directions on the label.

It is about this moment of year that folks start seeing insects wandering around inside their houses. One of the more visible of these insects is the carpenter ant.

These chunky black ( occasionally red and black) ants can range from twenty five percent inch for worker ants up to three-fourths of an inch for the queen. Like all species of ants, carpenter ants have a constricted hourglass waist and elbowed antennae. These traits distinguish them from the thick-waisted termites with their straight antennae. Ants are closely related to bees, wasps, and sawflies.

Carpenter ants share with just one annoying addiction with termites. They construct broad nests in timber, including logs, stumps, tree trunks, telephone poles, and, unfortunately, buildings. Nests are normally begun in deteriorating timber that has been exposed to moisture. Often, the colony will extend its nest to adjacent, sound wood.

The colonies of carpenter ants are oftentimes long lived. A single fertilized queen founds each colony. She establishes a nesting site in a cavity in timber. She then rears her first incubate of workers, giving them food to eat salivary secretions. She does not leave the nest nor feed herself throughout this period. The workers who are reared first assume the undertaking of gathering food with which to feed the younger larvae. As the food supply gets to be more constant, the colony population grows very rapidly. A colony does not reach maturity and become proficient at producing young queens and males until it incorporates 2,000 or more workers. It may take a colony from 3 to 6 years or longer to reach this stage. Annually thereafter, the colony will carry on produce winged queens and males, which leave their nest and conduct mating flights in the spring and summer.

While termites actually eat and digest timber, carpenter ants simply chew and tunnel through it to build their homes. Carpenter ants seldom cause structural injury to buildings, although they can result in significant damage over a period of years because nests are so long lived. Damage by carpenter ants can leave household structural timber ready to accept fungus, rots, and various sorts of decay. Some recent evidence suggests that they can likewise cause extensive injury to foam heat retaining material. If faced with chewing through hard wood or soft insulating material to build your nest, which would you prefer?

Finding carpenter ants indoors in the winter is an indication that they're nesting somewhere within the walls or floors of the building. This is thanks to the fact that carpenter ants, like all insects, are cold blooded. Ants active in the wintertime should be originating from a warmed source. Although the air temperature outside is freezing cold, heat from the sun or your furnace or wood stove may warm your home walls and stir overwintering ants to activity. Ants found in the spring and summer are frequently invaders wandering in from outdoors looking for food or drink. In the spring, carpenter ants go through a mass-mating or swarming behavior. During this occasion carpenter ants raid houses looking for sweets, because one of their normal sources of sugar, the sweet honeydew from aphids, is not available until the weather warms up.

The critical factor in carpenter ant control is treating the nesting area. Locating the nest site is very rarely easy and there are times it may be unthinkable to locate the nest. The most feasible sources of carpenter ants are window and door frames and sills, shower and tub enclosure walls, and kitchen and bath plumbing walls.

One or more of the ambitions of Integrated Pest Management and one good reason we encourage carpenter control by direct nest treatment is to limit the amount of pesticide applied. Oftentimes, we can find the ants to assist with the treatment.

Their zest for sweets may be their downfall. One of the most effective ways to control carpenter ants is to set out poison baits. Attracted to the sweet taste, the worker ants collect the bait and bring it back to the colony, where they share it with the developing larvae and the queen.

It may be important to be aware what kind of ant you are treating since some ant species prefer different foods. Baits are formulated to work with certain species and will most likely specify which ones on the label.