Many of you may encounter ants in your garden. You must understand that often they can be a harbinger of many other issues. If you live in Ireland and your home gets infestated with ants, you can contact Owl Pest Control Dublin for help.
Ants are considered to be social insects and they are one of the most common pests that you can find.
These ants are not all that bad for your garden as they often help you by eating termites, fleas, caterpillars, and many other dead remains of different insects and animals. These ants will eat the entire waxy material from all peony buds, and allow them to bloom fully.
Having said all these attributes, if still, you are interested to know how you can control the multitudes of ants, keep reading.
Most of these ants are primarily interested in various insects that can produce sticky “honeydew,” e.g. aphids, scales, whiteflies, and mealybugs, and all these can do lots of damage to our plants. So, ants do the job of protecting, cultivating, and consuming insects that can be more destructive.
These ants are divided socially into several castes e.g. workers, males, and queens. When you see a plethora of ants present in the garden, then it is a good idea to track down the mound where these ants have formed to build their colony.
When you are in the garden try to examine your plants and check whether they have tinier, and more destructive creatures that must have drawn the ants.
Now let us see how these black ants can be useful to us before we talk about their negative points.
1. Ants can control pests naturally
Like some of the beneficial bugs e.g. ladybeetles, and green lacewings ants often can help control pests by eating away their eggs and young. Ants can also disturb them during their feeding.
Ants are some kind of agent for effective biological control and some organisations prefer to use ants as part of their Integrated Pest Management strategy. Remember, this is not a very new concept but farmers have been using ants for controlling pests since 300 A.D.
2. Ants improve pollination rates
As the population of the pollinator is decreased, many gardeners will struggle to achieve hearty harvests from the fruiting crops consistently. Here these ants can help! In search of their food, these ants will march from one flower to another flower, and as a result they often will end up acting as unintentional pollinators.
3. Ants can support a healthy ecosystem
In all kinds of traditional gardening, these ants can aerate the soil by digging tunnels that may carry water, oxygen, and various other nutrients to plant roots. Also, they speed up the decomposition rate of organic material, e.g. dead insects and leaves, thereby fertilizing plants.
A Tower garden does not use soil but still, ants can benefit the growing environment. That is because besides feasting on pests, these ants themselves will serve as lunch for any larger organisms, like frogs, lizards, birds, and animals that help preventing pest problems.
How ants will hurt your garden?
If there are only a few ants present in your garden then it may not be a matter of concern, but if you notice a very large concentration of them, then you must consider the following –
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Ants can increase pest populations
Do you know what do these ants like? If you ever spilled any soda or bagful of candy on your sidewalk, then you probably know that you are spreading sugar. In such a case, you can easily guess what aphids, mealybugs, whiteflies, scale, and other sap-sucking pests can produce naturally.
Then sugar will be formed out of these sticky liquid secretion called “honeydew” that will appear. Now there is one interesting part:
Like any human farm cow, all these ants farm aphids will start protecting all these bad bugs from the predators so they can easily get milk or honeydew from them. All these honeydews will be carried back to the nest and it will be shared with their queen and all other workers. Sometimes ants will also move aphids to their nest.
The scientific term used for this kind of relationship is known as mutualistic symbiosis.
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Ants can cause property damage and pain
There are a few problems that ants may create, which can be a big concern to your garden. There are 2 types of ants, in particular, that can be called troublemakers.
Perhaps one of the most infamous species of ant is the fire ant that will also sting when provoked. Their venom can also produce a painful welt that can last for many days. Needless to say, in case your plants are full of fire ants, then your harvesting can always be an unpleasant experience.
However, the biggest problem is with the carpenter ant. Usually, carpenter ants build their homes within the wood. They may not be very picky about the type of wood, but the structure of your home could become like a decaying stump.
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Carpenter ant damage
Though carpenter ants cannot sting like fire ants, they can bite by using their powerful jaws and spray formic acid that may create a burning sensation and you may be wounded.
Both carpenter ants and termites can affect wood, often the damage due to termite and carpenter ants look almost the same and people frequently mistake for one another. Usually, carpenter ants can damage wood for making room for their nests, and termites will eat wood for their nutrition.
For distinguishing between a carpenter ant and termite, you need to properly examine the hollowed wood. Typically, ant colonies will be polished and fully clean inside and feature holes through which these insects will dispose of debris.
However, subterranean termite colonies will often be muddy or contain dirt. Usually, the ants will prefer to attack any decayed wood to get better humidity and temperature levels that it will provide.
Although all these ants may not live without the wood, they can always damage the structures where they can nest for years if their colony is active. Also, one of their colony can potentially split off into many more, which may continue to weaken your structure.
How can you control ants in your house?
Mostly in Dublin, it is the black ants that will venture indoors. Usually, they do not live in the house but just come for food. By blocking entrances and also hiding sugary substances can prevent an invasion. Also, you can kill existing ants by using a bait station. Due to smaller openings in ant stations, pets will not be able to reach your bait.
How should you get rid of ants?
You can just keep down all the aphids, scale insects by using suitable controls. If any plants are loosened, then firm them back and water well. With good watering ants will be discouraged as they usually prefer dry conditions.
If the plants are badly damaged, or the presence of ants becomes a problem in your house, then it is better to follow these ants back to their nest instead of where you see them. You can treat nests directly, and this can avoid the nuisance created by these ants. Alternatively, you can also contact Owl Pest Control Dublin to protect your house.
How can you eliminate ants on the lawn?
The presence of ants can be a real pain in your lawn as they can make anthills. Though anthills may not be too big, however, they may cause patches that allow weeds to easily get into the turf.
Often the use of boiling water will be good enough to kill all these ants but this will not be a very good idea as it can result in scorched patches, which again can form a colony of weeds. It will be better to water this anthill regularly by using cold water, that will not kill the turf but can disturb the ants and they will move on.
How to get rid of and anthills and ant nests?
You can break ant nests and hills by using a fork and treat them with a liquid residual insecticide or a dust that contains bendiocarb or deltamethrin.
Are these ant bait stations effective?
Yes, they are effective but you should keep replacing these baits so long these ants visit. These baits can work best only for black ants because other species do not notice them. They will be worth trying where there is no nest or where the nest is inaccessible.
Will it be advisable to treat every ant nest present in the garden?
No, you should not treat all kinds of nests. If you try to treat every ant nest present in your garden then the winged female ants that are present in the neighboring gardens will try to seek new nest sites during the summer season and are most likely to survive too.
This is because the entire worker ants will predate on new queens, and in this way maintain a natural balance in their population.
Author Bio:- Julian Ann is Project Manager, Working at Zoom Wings and also like writing on various themes and topics. This article “How to Control the Ants Present In Your Garden?” is written by Julian for Zoom Wings a professional Guest Posting Service providing company. Follow Julian to keep getting her latest updates and well written articles.
