I have large black ants all of a sudden in my house. In my daughter upstairs room and even in kitchen dishwasher. Do you think they are possibly carpenter ants? There were about 50 in the dishwasher yesterday. Not sure what approach to take since i only see inside. Thank you..
First and foremost – DO NOT SPRAY ANYTHING INSIDE THE DISHWASTER! Some people will do this which can make the dishwasher smell for extended periods of time. Running the dishwasher through a cleaning cycle will get rid of the pesticide but the smell can linger. This alone can make the unit unusable so DO NOT SPRAY INSIDE. We recently had someone contact us after they did so using a smelly “off the shelf” spray they bought at their local home center store. In most all cases, ants in the dishwasher are there for one of two reasons. Either they’re seeking water due to local dry, hot weather or they’re seeking food. Many people commonly store dirty plates, pans, silverware, etc. in their dishwasher for more than one day. If you tend to accumulate dirty dishes for several days before running them through a wash cycle, you’re asking for trouble. No doubt there will be some kind of insect lured to the smell and one of the most common insects that will sniff out these dirty dishes are ants.
Now that you know what “not” to do, just what can be done for an ant problem like this? The first thing you should do is read through our CARPENTER ANT CONTROL article. One thing we explain in our article is how this ant will generally forage great distances to harvest food or water. It’s not uncommon for carpenter ants to forage from one property to another. In your case, the ants you’re seeing aren’t necessarily living on your home or even on your property. But regardless, you should attempt to locate the nest as our article explains. By finding and treating the nest directly, you’ll surely get the fastest and most complete control of the problem. Our article provides a video and lots of great information on how to locate a nest and it’s best to try this at first.
Now if you’re not able to track the ants back to any one nest location and after a day or two of watching them you find you are still confused as to where they might be coming from, you still have treatment options. The simplest thing to do would be to set out some CARPENTER ANT GEL. This slow working bait has proven to be very effective on carpenter ants as explained on our product page. Make placements anywhere you see the ants and they’ll readily forage to it within a few days.
Alternatively you can spray some PHANTOM LIQUID around the outside of the building on the foundation and other routes of entry. This treatment will effectively be putting a barrier in place that will affect any ants coming in from outside. You can spray inside as well focusing in on baseboards but since the liquid can be a little hard to use inside, we recommend the PHANTOM AEROSOL over the liquid. It goes on dry and invisible making it ideally suited for inside applications.
Phantom is slow acting and lasts at least a month when applied. It’s unique active won’t kick in for several days after the ants have picked up a lethal dose. By the time they realize what’s happened it will be too late and in most cases all the nests will be shut down and destroyed. This will take 1-2 weeks to complete but it’s highly effective and a good choice.
Here are direct links to the information and products listed above:
Carpenter Ant Control: https://www.carpenterants.com/carpenter-ant-control
Carpenter Ant Gel: http://www.bugspray.com/catalog/products/page560.html
Phantom: http://www.bugspray.com/item/phantom_insecticide.html
Phantom Aerosol: http://www.bugspray.com/item/phantom_aerosol.html