This time of year many in Boulder Creek are dealing with pesky little ants. Ever wondered where they come from and how to beat em? Doug Conrad from Boulder Creek Hardware has written a really informative article all about ants. The article is below. If you ever have any questions on building, terminating, cutting, painting etc… head over and ask Doug or Ann Marie at Boulder Creek Hardware.

Doug’s How To:

Whether they are in your pants or at your picnic, ants are amazing little creatures; well maybe not in your pants. Like bees, ants are social creatures with a social structure of workers and queens. I’ve always been amazed at these little guys and in researching for this article I came across even more interesting facts about ants than anyone in Boulder Creek would care to know. But I have to bore you with a few of them. It is estimated that there are over 22,000 species of ants and only 12,500 have been classified. Sometimes their colonies can number in the millions and they exist on almost every land mass on earth. That’s a lot of ants. They can range in size from a super tiny .03 of an inch to just over 2 inches long. Most are black or red but there are some that have a metallic luster. The life span of ants increases according to the hierarchy. Since the fertile males are at the lowest rung, they live only for a few weeks. Worker ants are a little higher up, so they live for 2 – 3 years. Queen ants live the longest, with a lifespan of almost 25 – 30 years!

Customers often come in thinking they have termites when actually they have ants. Yes, some ants have wings. These are usually the male drones but the queen will have wings for the early part of her life. You can tell the difference between an ant and a termite by the wings. A termite’s wings are both the same size, ants are different sizes. Termites have straight antennae and ants are bent. It’s hard to tell but the ant’s waist is slender and the termites are not as much. That’s the basic difference between these two, but do you know what you get if you cross ants with tics? All sorts of antics!

Around here we basically have two types of ants that most of us consider pests. Continue reading →