Ant alert

(Common) ants in Scotland usually first show up in and around houses at the end of March and get themselves more noticed in April and May as their numbers per nest grow with the Spring advancing into Summer.

This year, we've had first reports of ants by our customers during a short spell of warmer weather a couple of weeks earlier (at the beginning of March) and are now (at the start of April) expecting their activity to steeply go up as soon as day temperatures reach 10C and don't drop below 5C at night.

Can I prevent ants from coming to my home?

I often get asked this question by our clients, so I'll try to answer it for everyone here: Although garden ants outdoors are not pests (unless they have chosen your vegetable patch or a flower bed to nest in), they would become pests indoors once they have come to your home. The ants you would see first are workers who are foraging for food to feed themselves as well as they supply food to their nest. Ants primarily collect and feed on other (dead) insect but they also like to eat sap & juices of certain plants and sweet fruits and exploit aphids (small horticultural insect pests). In your home, ants would go after the foodstuffs with high contents of sugars and proteins such as (any) sugar, jam, honey, coca-cola and irn-bru. Try to deny ants access to them by good housekeeping. Else, you can inspect the exterior of your house and seal any gaps, cracks and crevises exceed 2 milimetres. Cut the lawn outside your home short and maintain your garden. A spray of a residual insecticide applied round the outside perimeter of your house in the Spring can prevent ants from reaching and infesting its interior later.

Do you already have ants?

We can assist you with service to control ants in and around your home and eradicate their infestations across Greater Glasgow and in Ayrshire.

Our pest control helpline 01294 689903 is open:

Mon – Fri 8:00 – 22:00

Sat and Sun 9:00 – 18:00

Can I get rid of ants once and for all so they do not come back every year?

I am afraid this could disappoint you but the correct answer is no. I do not mean we cannot eradicate the ant infestation may have occurred in your home or outside of it but it is likely ants may come again at some point in future.