Many different kinds of ants live in the Las Vegas area. Black ants are the most common and among the most harmless. Still, they can become a real pest if they discover something sweet in your kitchen and hordes of them invade your home hoping for a treat. Invasive Argentine ants, which are brown and about ⅛ inch long, are infamous for forming spanning supercolonies of millions of ants, and may swarm your home if food is scarce or they are flooded out of their tunnels by a storm. Fire ants are much more troublesome. These small red ants are so named because their venomous stings will cause you to feel a burning sensation! Stumbling upon a fire ant nest can lead to a painful encounter as hundreds of these aggressive ants swarm out to attack you. Carpenter ants pose the largest threat to your home, however. These large ants are similar to termites in that they will burrow into wood, destabilizing the structural integrity of your house in the process.

Odds are, you have a few ant colonies living on your property. If you want to prevent them from entering your home, start by making sure that food is stored in airtight containers. Be especially careful with sweet ingredients like sugar and honey, which tend to attract ants. Most commonly, ants begin to swarm in a house because a few workers discover an exposed source of food and relay the message back to the colony, leading to an infestation. Storing firewood directly outside your home and planting shrubs that scrape up against your walls will create a conducive environment for ant invasions. To avoid inviting ants into your home, store firewood away from your house and trim back your bushes so they don’t touch the sides of your home. If you want to eliminate ants inside your home, you can buy sprays that will kill them on contact and bait stations which will lure them in and spread poison throughout their colony. Just know that exterminating an entire ant colony in this fashion is highly improbable.