I should have called you first but we had ants on our deck and some inside so we sprayed an ortho product. Well we killed some but its like they just stay off where we spray. Do we need something stronger?
If you purchase any “over the counter” bugspray, it will have a range of stabilizers in the mix that are required to keep the formulation stable. Combine those nasty solvents along with the standard highly repellent and fast acting main ingredient? Well for sure, what you’re experiencing is what we would expect. True, you can kill some bugs when spraying. But these formulations won’t solve your problem and here’s why.
Most any insect can detect 99.9% of all insecticides and so after you spray, they will simply avoid where you treat. And since you can’t cover every square inch of your home and property, they will find untreated areas and move accordingly.
With some pests, like ants for example, this will lead to what we call “satellite nests” making the problem more complicated. This essentially takes 1-2 nests and turns them into 3-4. Over time, one home can have countless nests, all independent and self sufficient.
The point is if you aren’t killing them in their nests, they will just keep coming back in new areas finding where you didn’t treat and continue to wreak havoc. Essentially you’ll be chasing them around. This happens because the ones you see represent less than 1% of the colony or nest and so when new workers and scouts are sent out, they’ll create new trails where you haven’t treated. Ants are very good at this because they will “communicate” with one another. They use communication along with scent trails to know where to go and where to avoid.
So do you need something stronger? No!
What you need is an active ingredient pests like ants will not be able to detect. This is why we routinely recommend products like PROTHOR and BITHOR.
Prothor uses a very stealthy active so when you treat, the target pests have no idea there is a chemical where they’re active. The net effect is that they will pick some up, bring it back to their nests and then when the active starts to work in 2-3 days, the entire nest will be killed. This is mission critical when dealing with communal pests like ants, roaches or termites.
Bithor is a bit different because it includes a little bit of the more traditional active so that it can kill quickly. But that part goes away in a day or two and then the stealthy active kicks in like Prothor.
In summary, you’ll see us recommending these two products for many pests. Generally the Prothor for outside and the Bithor for inside. This dynamic duo can solve any pest problem.
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