[Copesan University] When Ants Make Your Customers Facility Their Home

When ant pests infest any facility, they are bound to cause numerous problems, but when they invade health-care and senior living facilities — where lots of food, fluids and unsuspecting patients are waiting — they pose a host of additional, unique challenges.

In these environments, there are people who aren’t fully coherent or are unresponsive. So if red imported fire ants, for example, invade the room of a person who is not responsive, these ants could repeatedly sting the patient, and the patient may not even realize that he or she is being stung. As a result, this person could be in mortal danger and unable to summon help.

In other cases, small ants, like Pharaoh ants, could develop large populations before patients with reduced vision realize they are present and foraging throughout the room. Reduced motor skills also may cause many patients to frequently drop numerous crumbs on the floor, which will attract ants.

In addition, these facilities usually have a lot of fluids present, from IV fluids to bladder and drooling problems. Pharaoh ants, for example, love fluids. This causes a problem because the ants might be attracted to a patient’s fluids and carry bacteria and diseases to other patients or other patients’ rooms as a result.

ALL ANTS AREN'T CREATED EQUAL. To rid a facility of ant pests, you first must properly identify the type of ant species you are trying to control. With some ants, you can use an insecticide and get good control, but with others baits are necessary.

For example, when dealing with Pharaoh ants, conventional repellent insecticides have proven to induce the ants to bud, or split into smaller sub-colonies, with minimal control. Pharaoh ants have multiple queens and if they detect something that threatens their colony, they will send out secondary reproductives to start a new colony, which allows the ants to spread throughout the facility.

Pharaoh ants also don’t have structured nests like other ant species do. Any dark, protected and moist spot can provide them with a nesting site. This includes areas like food cabinets, drain pipes, faucets, showerheads and houseplants. Since they can develop a colony in any area with a little moisture, they could have several different colonies in a bathroom-sized area.

Pharaoh ants also have a wide range of food preferences, which makes baiting success difficult. Within individual ant colonies, food preferences can change on a daily or seasonal basis. Therefore, the best baiting strategy would be to offer multiple types of baits simultaneously. Treatment also will need to include multiple patient rooms so the ants don’t simply relocate to non-treated areas.

Red imported fire ants, which generally are restricted to the Southern states, pose their own unique challenges. It’s best to move patients from the room when treating thoroughly for these ants. Unfortunately, some patients may only be able to be moved for a couple of hours — if at all.

This creates a problem because getting control of these ants is difficult, and may require repeated applications of liquid or granular residuals. Baits also can be used, but they are slower acting.

Then, even when control is maintained inside, many facilities continue to draw these ants in. Some facilities have fire ant mounds throughout their grounds, so there is always a lot of ant pressure on the building. Many buildings also have moisture problems or are landscaped in a way that attracts the ants toward the building. Once the ants are inside the building, they have access to all the food they would ever need, which makes regular treatments necessary in these cases.

CONCLUSION. When treating health-care and senior living facilities, ants can cause many and unique challenges If you don’t want ants to make your facility their home, you have to inspect thoroughly and approach each situation with an open mind for treatment options.

J.B. Howell is technical director and entomologist, Holder’s Pest Control, Houston, Texas. Jan Schmidli is Copesan’s quality and operations field support specialist.

This article was excerpted from materials by Copesan. Copesan’s Internet training program, Copesan University, is now available to the entire pest management industry. Visit www.pctonline.com/copesan for available courses.