6909 Glen Landing
Las Vegas, NV 89130
(702) 769 - 8588

In our business, ants represent a peculiar problem. If we "spray" for them, they come back as soon as the chemical quits working, or they find another area of the structure that they like and show up there. They drive us nuts, and cost us a lot of money...it costs money to take care of callbacks, you know.

We have tried to explain to our customers that having ants around outside is, to a degree, having a fire outside. Sooner or later, the odds are that your house will catch on fire. Same with ants. We take care of the inside of our customer's houses, and treat around the outside, as well. This works pretty well keeping the ants at bay, but if they are around, they'll have underground galleries, some extending under the house, and we can't get to them there. Then, their scouts will find one of a number of ways in, and boom, ants. All over the kitchen. We tell our customers that we will hit the ants we see close to the house at no charge, because it helps us help them, but.....our rates are based on time, and we don't build in time (=$) for servicing the whole property. The rates are just for the house.

Enough of our customers want us to kill every ant on the property that it has been difficult to deal with. Recently, we turned our attention to a new exterior baiting system. The general principle behind baiting rather than using sprayable chemicals is that the ants take the bait back to the colony and with enough bait, the colony dies. Ants, being social insects are completely dependent on the colony. If the queens get this bait, they die, and the whole system goes down. This is not a new concept, but our industry is perfecting this usage, and is using the same principles on termites as well. We just recently purchased a complete system, little plastic special-made cups with spikes on the bottom to stick in the ground, and the chemical to use in them. We tested the system at two of our customer's houses, in perhaps the "buggiest" neighborhood in Las Vegas. It clobbered the colonies. There were ant trails all over, now down to a few stragglers, and if we leave them out longer, the colonies should be eliminated. We were pleased, a lot.

After this test, and determining that this system worked as well as advertised, we decided to market it to our customers. The key is to put the cups out, near the obvious ant trails...they'll find the cups. Then, leave the cups out, refill them when we do the regular monthly service. Not only will this kill out the colonies that are in operation now, if other colonies spread from the neighbors (as they do), they'll get into the cups, and take the bait back to their colonies. As long as the cups are out, and refilled regularly, the ants are going to out of business.

If you are interested in setting up this ant control program, please call us and we'll explain the details further. Rest assured that this will NOT be included in the price of a normal pest control service. It's not going to be horribly expensive, though....and it doesn't have to stay in place year 'round. Right now, our plans are to charge a setup fee, good for the first three years, then add on about $20 per month to service the bait stations. (Can't help it...the liquid bait costs money and our time is worth something, as well).

Our opinion concerning this baiting system is that with a large outside problem, it will eradicate it. Furthermore, if left out and operating, this will not ever be a problem again. Another potential method of handling this is to set the stations up, keep them out for a few months, eliminate the problem, pick them up when everything's gone, (which will stop the regular expenditures), and put them back out if and when the ants show up again. This whole thing is brand-new to us, too, and while we have to make a profit on our time and work, we don't intend to make more than a reasonable amount. Like call us, and we'll work out the details.

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