Follow it rather than wipe it away
Each worker ant that walks the same route to food and back strengthens the scent trail for the ants behind it, which is why a trail seems to grow busier the longer it's left. Cleaning it away only means the ants lay a fresh one from scratch; tracing it back shows you where the colony actually lives.
Locating the entry point
Choose a warm, settled part of the day when activity peaks, and watch the line as it runs away from wherever the food was found. The threshold of a back door, a gap around pipework, or the edge of a patio door frame are the most common entry points in Bexley's semis and bungalows.
The borough's gardens, front and back
Bexley's 1930s semis and bungalows typically have gardens both front and back, and a patio built against a rear extension gives a colony the warm, dry conditions it prefers. The nest doesn't need to be close to the house either - joints between older paving slabs, or the base of a garden wall well away from the building, can still send a trail the whole way indoors.
What to leave alone for now
- Spraying the visible trail, which kills foragers and leaves the colony untouched
- Pouring boiling water into paving, which can crack mortar and rarely reaches the queen
- Filling the entry gap before the nest itself has been treated
- Scattering loose powder along the trail, which can split one colony into several
Sealing the gap afterwards
After the colony's gone, the last step is sealing just the specific gap the ants used, a threshold, a pipe hole, or a mortar crack, true near Bexleyheath too, where the borough's main town centre. Weep holes and air bricks should stay clear, sealing them shut only traps moisture inside the wall, true near Crayford too, where housing bordering the Crayford Marshes and the industrial estates along the river Cray.
Booking ant control in Bexley
Ant control in Bexley runs £190 for a flat and £220 for a house, and because around Bexley Village, where the oldest part of the borough — Georgian and Victorian housing around the historic, it helps to say roughly whereabouts in the garden the nest might be when you book ant control, with the rest on the Bexley ant control page.
