Sugar Ant Control for Kitchens

Odorous House Ant Control

The small brown or black ants trailing across a kitchen counter, along a windowsill or up the side of a trash can are almost always odorous house ants. Most people call them sugar ants. They are about an eighth of an inch long, and if you crush one it gives off a smell often described as rotten coconut, which is where the name comes from. They are the most common ant call we take, by a wide margin.

Odorous house ants are drawn to sweets, but they will feed on grease, pet food and crumbs, and they need water more than anything else. That is why the trail so often ends at a sink, a dishwasher, a pet bowl or a damp spot under a leaking pipe. Weather moves them indoors. Heavy rain floods shallow outdoor nests and drives the colony inside. A dry spell sends workers in looking for water. Either way, the ants you see are foragers following a scent trail back to a nest that may be under mulch, under a slab, behind siding or inside a wall void.

This species is hard to spray away for a specific reason. A colony can have many queens and many nests, and when workers are killed with a repellent spray the colony responds by splitting and relocating. The trail disappears from the counter and reappears a week later along a different cabinet. Homeowners often go through several cans of spray this way and end up with more nests than they started with.

Our approach begins with a free inspection with no obligation. A technician follows the trails to find where the ants are entering and, where possible, where they are nesting. Then we place baits along the active trails. Bait works with the ants' own behavior. Foraging workers carry it back and share it through the colony, so the product reaches the queens and the brood instead of only the workers you can see. We also apply non repellent treatment at entry points and, where a nest sits in a wall void, treat it directly. We ask you to leave the trails alone for a few days after the visit so the workers keep feeding.

Small habits help the treatment hold. Wipe up spills, keep sweets sealed, rinse recycling and fix the drip under the sink. Ants are covered under our pest prevention program, which services the home on a recurring schedule, and for most households that is the simplest way to keep sugar ants at the lowest practical level through the year.