Ants in Your Dishwasher

You walk into your kitchen to make a quick snack, and afterwards you go to put the dishes in the dishwasher. You open the door and are met with a swarm of hundreds of ants scurrying throughout your dishwasher. If you’ve ever experienced an ant infestation in your home, chances are you’ve come across this creepy sight. But what leads to this, and can it be prevented?

 

Why Are There Ants in the Dishwasher?

Ants are drawn to our dishwashers for a few reasons. The first of which has to do with the remnants of food that are present on dirty dishes. Ants make their way in to scavenge from these bits of residue, and drink from any water droplets that are in the dishwasher and/or its pipes. In addition to this, they can also be drawn to the warmth inside the appliance and enjoy the fact that it keeps them hidden from sight.

Lucky for them, when dishwashers are not sealed tight, they can be very easy for ants to access.

DIY Attempts

The most common reaction to finding ants in the dishwasher, is to run the dishwasher. Most people assume this will flush the ants out, but that’s not exactly true. While it may eliminate most of the ants that are currently in the appliance, there’s a chance that some of them can survive by slipping out via small cracks, crevices, or piping before getting washed away. Moreover, whatever ants are washed away in a single cycle are just a super tiny fraction of the colony that they came from, meaning that the next time you open the dishwasher, there’s likely to be a new group of ants crawling all over your dishes.

Some people take it upon themselves to try spraying store-bought pesticides into the dish washer to stop the ants in their tracks. However, even if you run the dishwasher after applying chemicals inside, toxic residue can in the dishwasher which can transfer your clean dishes, putting you and your family at risk of major health problems.

In short, targeting the ants that are currently in the dishwasher is a temporary and potentially problematic course of action. Instead, you want to target the ants at their source: the colony itself.

Stopping Dishwasher Invasions

Ant queens constantly produce new offspring, quickly replacing any colony members you’ve finished off. On average, the life spans of worker ants can last from nine weeks to a few years. Queens, however, can last far longer. Depending on the particular species, as well as the conditions in which she lives, the average queen ant can live between 10-30 years. The colony will survive as long as the queen does, meaning that you could have an endless stream of ants entering your home for years if they’re not stopped.

With professional pest control intervention, invasive ants are targeted at the root through the use of specially designed ant bait. The ant bait is a gel and/or liquid treatment which is highly toxic to ants that is applied in particular areas in and around the home where there is ant activity. After walking through the product or picking it up by mistaking it for food, the ants return to the colony. Once there, the products are easily spread from member to member, quickly eliminating the colony’s entire population.

If you have ants in your home, give us a call today and we will help you prevent ants from making their way in your fridge. Enjoy clean, ant-free dishes once again.