Ants

Ants do not wander into a building at random. A forager that finds food leaves a trail behind it on the way back to the nest, and the ants that follow use the same route. The neat line you see on the worktop is not the problem itself — it is the result. The problem is the colony at the far end of that trail, and the colony is usually in a wall void, under the skirting, or in the soil outside.

How to recognise them

The species found indoors look much alike at first glance, so identification comes down to size and colour.

• Pharaoh ant (Monomorium pharaonis): about 1.5 mm, yellow to orange, very small.
• Argentine ant (Linepithema humile): about 3 mm, dull brown.
• Odorous house ant (Tapinoma sessile): about 3 mm, dark brown to black.
• Carpenter ants (Camponotus species): 6–13 mm, obviously larger than the rest.

Knowing which one you have matters, because it changes where the nest is likely to be and which bait goes down.

Why they come indoors

Ants enter a building for food and water, for warmth and shelter, or to escape conditions outside. In hot dry weather they come in looking for moisture, which is why they turn up first at the kitchen sink and in the bathroom. After heavy rain they come in the other direction — driven out of a flooded nest. As the weather cools the search shifts from food towards somewhere warm and sheltered. That is why ants read as a seasonal problem in most homes: they appear within a few days, then become less visible when conditions change. The colony stays where it is.

Bait, not spray

Wetting a visible trail with an aerosol kills the foragers that happen to be out at the time. Foragers are a small part of the colony; the egg-laying females and the brood stay in the nest, and fresh workers are on the trail again shortly afterwards. Spraying also breaks up the trail, so the ants reroute and the problem reappears somewhere else in the house.

A bait works differently. It pairs a slow-acting active ingredient with an attractive food carrier — boric acid, fipronil, avermectin or hydramethylnon among them. The forager survives long enough to carry the bait home, and the active is distributed inside the colony. Seeing ants for a while after baiting is therefore expected; heavier traffic to the bait means it is being taken.

We use biocidal products licensed by the Turkish Ministry of Health, placed on the runs the ants are actually using and out of reach of children and pets. Do not spray around a bait point and do not wipe that run down with detergent — either will undo the work.

Carpenter ants are a different job

Carpenter ants do not eat wood; they excavate galleries and nest in it, and they favour timber that damp has already softened. Large dark ants coming out of the same point day after day are usually a sign of a water problem — a leaking pipe, a blocked gutter, condensation in a roof void. Treating the insect alone falls short here. Until the moisture is traced and dealt with, the same timber stays fit to nest in.

What you can do

• Keep food in sealed containers, clear crumbs and grease, and take rubbish out regularly.
• Fix dripping taps and leaking traps.
• Caulk cracks in walls and openings in the foundation, along door and window frames, and where pipework passes through.
• Keep pots, planting and mulch at least 30 cm back from the wall.

These sound like small jobs, but they remove the reason the ants came in, and that is what decides how long the treatment holds.