Below is a list of common ants that may nest in walls with some tips on how to identify them.
Ant colony in attic.
It is important to check insect traps regularly and refresh them periodically to ensure they continue to be effective.
First and foremost don t spray any further as an initial step.
While it would be unusual to have an entire colony in your attic it is not unheard of.
A mature carpenter ant colony can have 10 000 ants so random spraying will be ineffective.
However carpenter ants maintain a system with a main nest and satellite colonies.
The ones you see are scout ants foraging for food to take back to the colony.
These ants are about 1 8 inch long and range from pale brown to black in color.
When you see an ant your first impulse is probably to step on it.
Another important situation that favors ant activity in walls and other voids is the opportunity to gain entrance inside the home or other structures through cracks gaps and openings that lead directly inside.
You ll kill it but for every ant you see there may be hundreds more hiding in the house.
It sounds a bit out of character for ants to be in your attic they generally only are found in places that have a food source of some type.
Significant ant colony in an attic.
Carpenter ants have built a reputation for shaving through wood making holes and tunnels that damage it.
Prebait ants in areas you ve previously seen them.
For permanent control you need to get rid of the whole colony.
They prefer warm regions.
Ants could damage your attic in as few as six months.
What you must do is find the nest and eliminate it.
These ants actively excavate wood.
Ants will build nests where ever they can find a suitable area to do so.
I would defiantly take a closer look at these ants.
Use these scouts to wipe out the entire colony.
This video is unavailable.
Light brown these ants are between 1 12 and 1 8 inch long.
They will bring the bait back to the colony to share which will help destroy the colony.
Dry wood termites on the other hand look a lot like ants and would have more reason to be in your attic.
The good news here is that the ants are visible to you and they are still going outdoors to forage which means they will walk through areas that that you treat outdoors.
Ants become dwellers inside walls and other voids simply as the result of finding a more preferred site for food moisture and protection than what is available to them outdoors.
Some ants are more attracted to sweets and some to fats and oils.
Baits have the added advantage of being easy to place and relatively mess free.
A single ant colony could have as many as 50 000 individuals.
All types of ants live in colonies that consist of hundreds or even millions of individual ants with one or more egg laying queens.