Why the Nest Might Not Be Yours
Black garden ants nest outdoors, under slabs, paths and the base of walls, and send workers out for food. A worker does not care whose kitchen it is. In a row of houses sharing walls, or a block stacked over a single footprint, the nearest sweet food can easily be one door along from the colony that found it.
Slough has plenty of both: long terraced streets and older houses converted into flats. In either, ants that seem to arrive from nowhere are usually following a route along a shared wall, a floor void, a pipe run or the gap under a party fence.
Clues That They Are Coming Through
- The trail starts at a party wall, often low down behind a kitchen unit or along the skirting.
- Ants appear round a pipe, a boxed-in soil stack or a gap where cables pass through the floor.
- They show up upstairs with no sign of them at ground level in your own home.
- Your garden and paving show no soil heaps, but next door’s patio does.
- The neighbours mention ants as well, often on the same days.
None of these is proof on its own, but two or three together point clearly towards a nest outside your own boundary. The general method for tracing a nest is set out in how to find an ant nest.
Ants From Below in a Flat
Upper flats get ants that have climbed. The colony is often at ground level, under the paving round the building or in the base of the wall, and workers travel up through service ducts, around radiator pipes and inside wall cavities. Treating only the worktop where they surface deals with the last few feet of a long journey.
In a converted house, the ground-floor flat may be sitting almost on top of the nest, and ants coming up through a suspended floor are a sign of that. Ants inside walls and under floors in more depth are covered on the Hungerford page.
Talk to the neighbours before booking. If the nest turns out to be under their slabs, treatment there does far more than treatment on your side, and it needs their agreement. A quick word first saves a wasted morning.
Treating a Shared Problem
Where a nest can be reached, a residual insecticide goes in at the nest and along the outside wall bases and entry points. Indoors, gel bait placed in cracks and out of reach is carried back along the trail, which is the part that matters when the nest itself is behind a wall or under someone else’s floor. Foragers share it through the colony and it reaches the queen.
Ant control is a fixed £240, confirmed before anything is booked, and what the treatment involves for your building is explained before you commit. If two households share one nest, tell us at booking; it is usually simpler to deal with it together than one side at a time. Mention children, pets, fish tanks or anyone vulnerable in the home as well, and keep everyone off treated areas until dry and as instructed on the day.
If They Come Back Next Summer
A nest cleared on your side does not stop a colony two doors along from finding the same gap next year. Once the treatment has done its work, seal what you can: the gap along the skirting on the party wall, around pipes where they come through the floor, and under the back door. When ants keep returning, why ants keep coming back works through the likely reasons.