Ants Gain Foothold in Homes : Influx of Pests Has Victims Stomping Mad
How bad have the ants been lately in Orange County? So bad, quips James Bone of Mission Viejo, that his teen-age daughter recently refused to go back into her room until he promised to spray the critters from her closet.
“The place was just overrun,” recalls Bone, 49, an accountant. “Then when you think you’ve got ‘em licked, they find a new way to get wherever they need to go to find food and water. . . . It’s a continuing battle.”
Ants traditionally begin their mass marches into picnic baskets and kitchens during hot weather, but to hear some anguished local residents tell it, this has been the worst season in years. Insect specialists aren’t so sure, but they acknowledge that hot temperatures and the continued statewide drought have helped bring out the pests in droves.
“Always late in the summer and when it’s very dry, you can safely say that most insect populations will build to their highest levels, and the ants are no exception,” said Nick Nisson, an entomologist with the county’s Department of Agriculture.
The most common variety in Southern California has become the Argentine ant, a brown insect usually no more than 1/8-inch long. It is the ants’ mobility that makes them a particularly pervasive pest, Nisson said.
“If a colony is disturbed in some way, they’ll pick up an entire colony and move it, taking all their eggs with them,” he said. The best way to combat the problem: “Keep everything clean--ants are scavengers and they’ll eat whatever they can find.”
Tim Saunders, president of Mission Pest Control in Newport Beach, says: “We’ve had an ant explosion along with the hot spell a week or so ago. . . . Invariably, when we get that hot weather at the end of the season, it stirs up the ants and we get lots of calls.”
Of course, Saunders isn’t complaining. In fact, he estimates that his orders for ant extermination jobs have increased 30% in recent weeks, totaling about 1,000 last month. Ants now produce about 60% of his business, Saunders says.
While the hot, dry weather has no doubt pushed ants from outdoor nests into kitchens, bathrooms and anywhere else in the home where they can find food and water, some believe the current boom also reflects changes in methods used to combat the ants.
Because of legislation and statewide sentiment aimed at reducing chemical pesticide use, Harry Griffiths, owner of Entomological Services Inc. in Corona, says the pesticides he uses today are less than half as potent as those of five or 10 years ago.
He says the ants that so many people are now noticing are the result.
“I think we’re seeing the fallout,” said Griffiths, whose company controls pests for Treasure Farms in Irvine and other commercial agriculture sites in Orange County and around the state. “The ants are worse, and they’re going to continue to be worse. It’s a much more serious problem.”
Whereas Griffiths’ employees used to spray an orchard floor once every two or three years, now they may spray three or four times in a year. And growers are doubling their release of parasites aimed at killing the ants--at a cost of $20 per acre, Griffiths said.
“I don’t know who to blame it on, but it’s bad,” Griffiths said. “And now we’re getting to the levels where everybody notices it.”
Ants are not known to carry diseases and, for most, pose little more than a nuisance, souring a picnic or prompting a few extra cleanings in the kitchen. But experts say that the ant, while producing some helpful, bacteria-killing secretions, can indirectly hurt crops.
In citrus orchards in particular, the ants help protect crop-attacking pests such as the aphid or the white fly, “physically driving off” other insects that prey on them, Nisson said. The crop attackers produce a sweet secretion that is eaten by the ants.
“It’s very disruptive to pest-management programs in agriculture,” Nisson said.
When Frank Austin began patenting ant homes in New Hampshire in the 1930s, he advised: “Don’t step on that ant; give him a home instead.”
As calls to exterminators now climb, only a relatively small number of area residents appear to have heeded his advice. But more do seem to be grudgingly adopting the ant as an unwanted presence, specialists say.
As Bones of Mission Viejo noted: “They’re smart little critters, and they’ve lived here a lot longer than I have.”
