Pharaoh ants are a tiny yellowish-brown ant, but are almost transparent in appearance. They live in large colonies inside buildings like residential tower blocks or places that have a high occupancy. They are often associated with buildings such as hospitals, office blocks and more commonly nowadays in people’s homes. These are all preferred places of habitat mainly due to the constant heat supplied by central heating and there is a fair share of large residential blocks in Bexley. They are similar in form to common black garden ants, but much smaller, less than half the size in fact. They measure less than one-tenth of an inch, at just 2 mm in length. As the pharaoh ant is of tropical origin it cannot survive the wonderful outdoor weather we have here in Bexley, living only inside.
Pharaoh ants are not a biting insect and feed primarily on high protein foods, such as fatty meats, spreading germs on food or places, as they travel through buildings. Because of this they can pose a serious health risk to people and pets. They can infest foodstuffs and can be linked to diseases such as:
Typhoid, Dysentery and food poisoning.
All of these diseases can land you in hospital or your pets at the vets, resulting in heavy costs. These are some very good reasons for the need of pharaoh ants to be controlled.
The Pharaoh ant colonies can contain many, many queens; up to 200 is quite common. An individual colony normally contains between 1,100–2,500 workers, but a high density of nests in a building gives the impression of massive colonies when in fact there may be 20 single nests dotted around. There is no hostility between neighbouring colonies and they are known to breed with another colony with ease, this is known as uni-coloniality. They reproduce sexually active individuals roughly twice a year in established colonies. A single seed colony can populate a large tower block, almost to the exclusion of all other insect pests, in just less than six months.
The treatment and eradication of pharaoh ants can be a long and laborious process depending on the size of building and the time that they have been infesting. Spraying an insecticide is inactive as the spray does not reach all areas needed and it just causes the pharaoh ants to scatter and build new nests elsewhere in the building. The most common and effective treatment is the laying of poison food baits where they forage. Depending on the amount of activity found and reported, baits will need to be replaced when they are empty, until there is no more feed from them. This may need to be done just twice, but sometimes 3-5 times in heavily infested buildings.
Ant killing sprays and treatments that you can buy in the shops won’t kill pharaoh ants. Only professional use insecticides will do the job, so if you see any signs of pharaoh ants in the kitchen, boiler cupboard or in the bathroom, make sure you call a pest control company to eradicate the problem before it spreads throughout and costs more money
