Callback Cures: Use Extreme Weather to Your Advantage

Photo: Istock.com/marccophoto

If the weather has been less than ideal lately, you can bet some peridomestic ants (and other pests) will be searching for an environmental reprieve ­— inside your customers’ homes. During the summer, two sets of conditions have reliably led to an increase of ants indoors:

1. Extended periods of heavy rain (especially when combined with unseasonably cool temperatures), and

2. Periods of hot, dry weather.

In both cases, an abundance or a lack of water is causing this behavior. Some of the worst culprits are Argentine ants, odorous house ants and pharaoh ants.

Heavy rain makes preventive exterior treatments difficult, so let’s focus on hot and dry weather. It shouldn’t be too difficult to predict where ants seeking water can be found indoors, so consider addressing the areas to their immediate exterior when performing regularly scheduled services.

If you haven’t already, place sticky traps in these places (discreet locations near the kitchen sink, refrigerator and in the bathroom) when you are servicing, so if conditions take a turn, you’ll already have “eyes” on the ground.

If you are attuned to the weather conditions, focus on areas typically exploited by ants. You’ll potentially identify the needs of your customers before they even know what they need — which just might blow their minds.