Ant Control in Clearwater and Pinellas: Why the Spray Makes It Worse

Every house on your street has ants. That's not a sales line. It's Florida. Roaches are different. There might be one or two houses on your block dealing with those. But ants get into everybody eventually.

We figure out which ant you've got first. That's a look, not a guess, and the look is free.

"Ants" isn't one problem

Here's what makes them harder to get rid of than people expect. Carpenter ants hollow out wood. Sugar ants are after what's on the counter. Pyramid ants nest in the yard and come inside to look around. Same word, different insects, and what works on one can make another one worse.

The can of spray under your sink is probably making it worse

Most over-the-counter ant sprays are repellent. That sounds like a good thing. It isn't. When ants sense it, the nest doesn't die. It moves. A big piece of the colony picks up the eggs and relocates somewhere else in your house, and now you've got two problems where you had one.

That same spray also ruins bait. Bait works because a worker carries it home and feeds it to the colony, queen included. Ants won't touch bait that's been contaminated with repellent, so the one thing that would have actually reached the nest gets shut off.

That's why they show up again three days later a few feet from where they were. You didn't do it wrong. The product did what it does.

What we do instead

We identify the ant, then we treat for that ant, because carpenter ants in a wall void and sugar ants trailing across a counter are not the same job. On a regular visit we also treat a band around your foundation and check the driveway and sidewalk for mounds and trails working toward the house. Here's what a regular visit looks like.

Related: Pest control · Roach control