If it isn’t bad enough that you may have a couple ants crawling around your kitchen or streaming into your house from the garden, but the real nightmare begins when, without notice (no posted signs), there are hundreds of flying ants coating your kitchen wall. A little background information, ants are social insects which are made up of different standings: labours, armed forces, the sovereign monarch (queen) and flying ants (reproductives). These flying ants are winged reproductives that swarm out from the nest to launch new colonies. They normally appear when the moisture content in the air is rather high and are attracted to brilliantly lit spaces. Once a queen(s) has been mated they will settle down in an appropriate location and start their own colony. Now, depending on the species of ant i.e. carpenter ants, once the colony is established, the harm to a building structure can be shocking. Did you know that ants are responsible for property damage worth up to 20 million in Canada every year and most home insurance policies don’t cover this kind of damage? Although we don’t have a lot of termites here in the lower mainland, these winged insects are often confused with flying termites, as the two pests share some likenesses. Prevention is often the best treatment and knowing the difference between the two can save you a lot of headaches. Termites have a straight, heavy waist while ants have a careworn waist. Termites have straight antennae while ants’ antennae are twisted. Ants do not shed their wings while termites do. You can be fairly certain that you’ve identified termites if you’ve also found discarded wings, especially near any windows and if you do find this – give us a call at go green pest control.ca and we will formulate a integrated pest management program tailored to your situation.
gogreenpestcontrol.ca Ladner Tsawwassen Delta B.C. Randy Bilesky BsF CPA
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