That spray from the hardware store just scattered them. We use professional bait that kills the queen. No queen — no colony.
📞 (703) 804-7057The most common kitchen ant in Northern Virginia. Repellent sprays cause colony splitting — you end up with 3 problems instead of 1.
Tunneling through wood in Sterling's older homes. They don't eat wood — they hollow it out for nesting. Structural damage is the real risk.
Established throughout Loudoun County's clay soils. Painful stings, aggressive colony defense, and impossible to remove without professional bait.
In every driveway and foundation gap in Sterling. Mostly nuisance but large colonies enter kitchens through expansion cracks.
Repellent sprays — every product at Home Depot and Target — work by making an area unpleasant. Ants don't die, they move. Odorous house ant colonies scatter when hit with repellent, fragmenting one colony into multiple. You treat the kitchen and two weeks later find trails in the bathroom and garage. We use non-repellent gel bait placed directly in harborage areas. Workers carry the active ingredient back to the colony, share it through contact and trophallaxis, and the entire colony — including the queen — is eliminated within days.
We identify the species first, because carpenter ant treatment is completely different from fire ant treatment. Getting it wrong means the treatment fails. We inspect entry points, identify nesting areas, and apply the right product in the right places. No broadcast spray. No wasted product. A follow-up confirms the colony is gone.
Sterling Park, Sugarland Run, and the older neighborhoods near Algonkian Regional Park have the most carpenter ant activity in the area. Northern Virginia's humid summers soften wood near roof lines, bathrooms, and crawl space perimeters — exactly where carpenter ants nest. If you're hearing faint rustling in walls or finding coarse sawdust near wood structures, call us.
Pest Control Crew of Sterling VA · Residential Only · Loudoun County