Updated on August 19, 2024
I would argue that bed bugs are the absolute worst pest to have in your home. They’re nearly invisible, vampire-like and are difficult (but not impossible) to get rid of. But, they’re not the top pest in the United States.
The most common pest is the ant. Ants are a superior pest by nature, quite simply because there are so very many of them. The second most common (and perhaps the most detested) pest is the cockroach. (Crawl further into the details with this reading.)
Here, let’s talk about what an ant infestation looks like and why this house-invading insect is the number one household pest. Our writing wouldn’t be complete, though, without a “help me” section. Thus, I promise not to leave you hanging and allow those ants to continue marching.
Do you have an ant infestation?
Ants are the top pest in the U.S. for a reason. Like leopard sharks infesting estuaries, ants will happily take over your home. An infestation, according to the Oxford dictionary, is "the presence of an unusually large number of insects or animals in a place, typically so as to cause damage or disease."
Ants are such a threat to infest because they know how to breed well. Queen ants can produce around 800 eggs per day. Generally, the queen is the mother of all other ants in her colony. This queen never stops producing, laying eggs until she goes to her eternal resting place, which could be anywhere from two to 20+ years.
The ant: Why it’s the number one pest
They will not soon be extinct. What sets the ant apart from other insects is that they just keep coming. For instance, in the mid 1950s, southern congresspeople received a flurry of letters and petitions complaining of imported fire ant damage to crops and livestock (in the south) and appealed to the U.S. Department of Agriculture for help. There is no end to these tiny offenders.
They travel well. Ants, my friends, are great long-distance travelers, whether it be a car, a truck, a train or perhaps even an airplane, (depending on the plane’s altitude, species of ant, flight length and location in hold). The black fire ant, for example, was accidentally brought home to Mobile, Alabama from South America in the early 1900s. Did you know that pavement ants originated in Europe, where these stowaways hid in soil used for ballast in merchant vessels during the 1700s to 1800s?
Their colonies are very tight knit. They practically breathe in unison. They’re so united towards their goals of survival, growth and reproduction, in fact, that they operate very much like a single organism, known as a "superorganism." Their division of labor is highly specialized, each part fitting together like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. They literally need one another to survive. This super trait allows them to accomplish extraordinary feats and gives them a major advantage over solitary insects (and animals). It also allows for a great home invasion.
Their colonies are massive. A "mature" colony can contain more than 200,000 ants. If it’s a supercolony, though, it can house millions of ants. What’s even more fascinating (and perhaps horrifying) is that there are more ants on our earth than there are stars in our galaxy. The total ant population worldwide is estimated at around ten quintillion ants, or 10,000,000,000,000,000,000, a figure that can be difficult to comprehend. That’s 1.2 billion ants per person in the world.
The ant: Which ones should you be on the lookout for?
The top three ant species that will attempt to take over your home are the odorous house ant, the carpenter ant and the pavement ant.
Odorous house ant
This ant, which emits a crushed rotten coconut aroma when crushed, may be the worst of the bunch. It's a versatile feeder and nests almost anywhere indoors, attracted to moisture and warmth. Indoors, they can take up residence in places like wall crevices, under carpets, behind paneling and near water pipes and heaters. Known for their adaptability, odorous house ants frequently shift their colonies to dodge poor weather, making them particularly elusive and persistent indoors.
Carpenter ant
Carpenter ants, too, are pretty awful. Their entire lives revolve around biting and chewing moist and soft wood. They’ll excavate this wood to create galleries for their nests and the nests of their family members until their dying day. These woodworkers are not just about destruction; they dine on carbohydrates, sugars and proteins, often feasting on dead insects, including their own kin. To spot their hideouts, tap on wood surfaces and listen for a hollow sound, or keep an eye out for small piles of sawdust—tell-tale signs of their activity. If not managed, they can cause significant damage to wooden structures in your home.
Pavement ant
What makes these ants terrible is that they’re literally everywhere. They carry a presence in every single state of the U.S. Their appearance often goes unnoticed until they try to pick up and carry away your picnic lunch. When these picnic-basket-stealers find food in your home, the "scouts" report back to the nest and the whole colony will try to move in. Their menu? Anything from kitchen leftovers to other insects, and even plant sap. They get their name from their preference for nesting in pavement cracks but don’t be fooled—they're just as comfortable setting up camp in your kitchen or bathroom, wherever there’s a drop of moisture.
The ant: How to rid your home of its presence
Here’s how to send those ants marching two-by-two to the hills, whether they’re on your kitchen countertop or walking across your living room walls.
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Clean up your messes. If it’s that sticky honey jar that you leave out on the countertop or that spray of apple juice that your toddler decorated the kitchen walls with last week, take care of it.
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Put an end to that 6-legged marching. As soon as a scout ant locates its next meal, it returns to its nest, laying down a scent trail by repeatedly pressing its abdomen to the ground. Its family members sense these secretions (or pheromones) and giddily follow this scented pheromone-rich trail. Dr. Killigan’s Six Feet Under Non-Toxic Insect Spray blocks these ant pheromones, thus causing ant panic. All ants literally lose their path to their next meal, to your house or to their nest, depending on where these miscreants were marching.
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Shower them with Dust to Dust. Dust to Dust, a safe and more effective non-toxic powder alternative to diatomaceous earth, is proven to have kill times up to 50% faster (than diatomaceous earth.) Use Dr. Killigan’s Insect Buster, a superb tool, to disperse this non-toxic, people-safe and plant-safe powder. As ants walk across this unsuspecting white powder that kills through contact, its tiny dust particles cling to the legs and body of these small manifoldly intelligent creatures. Later, as the ant attempts to groom the powder off of its body, it poisons itself, as the ant (and other insects that come into contact with Dust to Dust) is unable to either digest or excrete this substance. They perish from the outside in and the inside out—from both damage to their exoskeleton (outside in) and dehydration (inside out). For ants, death will take 4-24 hours, depending on the ant species.
- Wait. Allow Six Feet Under and our Insect Buster to do the work for you. Go ahead and grab that cool drink and head to your back patio, where you can’t see the ants. It’s time to restore your peace of mind.
