Eco-Friendly Ant Exterminator Portland and Seattle
Ant Control Services for Portland Oregon and Seattle Wa.
Eco-Effective GreenPro Certified Ant Control Services
We are ant exterminators using sustainable, organic and green methods to safely exterminate ants in and around Portland Oregon and Seattle Wa. homes and businesses.
Ants are year around pests that reside in the walls of our Portland and Seattle homes.
Nature First hears various versions of the following story many times a year.
Typically, a homemaker sees a solid line of ants in the kitchen that leads to some spilled food, or a pet dish. At first they clean up the food, remove the pet dish, and scrub the counters and floors. This surface cleaning breaks pheromone trails the ants have layed down for other ants to follow. She sees no more ants for a day or so. But all too soon, they’re back and usually in greater numbers.
She hates to use sprays, but the mother-in-law is coming over and she doesn’t want ‘mom in law’ to think she is a bad housekeeper. She goes to the store and gets a can of NUKE’UM insecticide. She sprays every ant she sees and is gratified to see lots of dead ants. There will be no ants seen in the area sprayed for at least several days. They are repelled by the lingering chemical smell. She just got a few days of ant control and made the ant problem a lot worse. The spray can stress the ant colony causing it to defensivly split, move, and become two colonies.
That insecticide was designed to kill on contact, and it’s repellent for a few days. After all, if a homeowner didn’t see instant dead ants when using these harsh products, they would doubt their effectiveness and wouldn’t buy them again.
Time to Call a Local Pest Control Company
We Kill The Colony. Unlike Pest companies that use repellent products. They believe in creating a chemical barrier and must keep respraying on a regular schedule. They have no interest in killing the colony because they want to keep you seeing ants, and stay on the contract. Most companies tell you to clear out your kitchen and stay out of the house for hours after they spray. And they tell you that they have to spray again every six weeks. Forever.
If you have an insect, pest or rodent problem we’ll solve it. Call for a Free Estimate!
We Provide Environmentally Friendly Ant Extermination Services
When you call Nature First Pest Control for ant control, we tend to ask a lot of questions. We do the detective work necessary to protect the environment by minimizing the amount of control product we use, and intelligently limiting where we use it.
The first condition we inspect for and ask about is moisture, even small amounts, in the walls, roof or floor. All species of ants will set up their colonies in or very near, a moist spot in a structure. Moisture problems can be caused by bad caulking, leaky windows and roofs, trees and brush touching the house as well as the connecting decking and fencing.
Other areas of concern include electric and telephone wires running from the house and into the trees. We look for bark dust that is mounded up on the foundation, dirt touching the siding, and old stumps and railroad ties near the house. It is very important that the homeowner and technician discuss these conditions and remedy them when practical.
Ant highway on cable wire
Ants are very territorial. They constantly test the borders of other ant colonies and when they find a weak or empty colony in a house, they will try to move in. Some neighborhoods can support many more colonies than others. This means that some homeowners have a constant problem, while others nearby don’t. With the recent arrival of Odrorus House Ants we are seeing Mega colonies that infest several houses at the same time.
Ants are cold blooded. When the temperature falls, they become less active. They need the temperature on the ground to be around 55 degrees to forage actively outdoors. But when they live in the structure, they become active too early to find food outside and they send out interior scouts early in the spring.
While it is important to get treatment started as soon as possible, the speed of the colony kill is very much weather related in Portland and Seattle. We expect you to see ants along the foundation for a few days after we have treated, and this is a good thing. Because the spray is non repellent, ants will freely walk on it and track the active ingredient back into the colony, where it will kill many more ants through the domino effect. The second reason to see ants after the initial treatment, is that there are still ants emerging from pupae or cocoons. It is normal to see these wandering ants for about a week or two after we treat..These emerging ants haven’t had any contact yet with any active ingredients, and will often wander about in places where ants were not seen before, The rest of the colony is usually dying, and these wanderers soon die. We want a call if you see organized activity such as a line of ants going directly to a food source after a few days. A new line usually indicates a rival colony has discovered that the colony that had dominated the territory in your home has been destroyed or greatly weakened. Nature hates a population vacuum, and another colony is ready to take advantage of the decline and absence of the original colony. The treatment that killed the original colony will still be active and will kill the new invaders as well in a few days.
We have developed our methods based upon Randy’s observations in the field over the last 28 years. Randy found that ants change their food preferences frequently with the changing seasonal needs for the colony. One time a sweet bait would be accepted, but a few days later be totally ignored. The colony would now be in search of protein based foods. These observations have provided us with the tools to give our clients guaranteed small ant extermination.
Safe Pest Control Services For Portland
When necessary to protect you, your pets and property, we may use products that are on the “Low Impact Pesticide List” and the “Reduced Risk List”. The pest control industry has made huge advances in the safety and efficacy of products approved for home use. We now know so much more about the biology and relationships between insects, rodents, and the eco systems that we are all a part of. As an example, building a home on what was a bare field, creates a micro climate that encourages some pests, and discourages others.
Our Natural Pest Control Treatment Process
Every property we service is unique, and so is our pest treatments. If you see a pest truck drive up with a big tank and spray rig, you can bet that almost all their customers get the same spray, in the same concentrations, in the same ways. That is very efficient and cost saving, to the other company. Our equipment of choice is a one-gallon hand sprayer, not two hundred gallons of the same mix for everyone.
Member of National Pest Management Association
Department of Agriculture AG-L0073581CPO, CCB# 207725, An Established leader in Natural Pest management. We strive to ‘exterminate’ naturally.
Schedule An Inspection
Contact Nature First to schedule an inspection with a licensed technician.