The administration of an elementary school in Saint-Bruno-de-Montarville, on the South Shore, reported the presence of pharaoh ants in the cafeteria kitchen and in several classrooms on the ground floor. A school is a particularly vulnerable environment to infestations of this type of ant, as the combination of numerous food sources, the heat generated by a large number of occupants and often aging buildings creates ideal conditions for their proliferation throughout the school year. Intervening in a school imposes strict safety constraints, because the products used must be safe for children and teenagers who are present on a daily basis in all the premises. The Nova Extermination team, certified exterminator on the South Shore and South Shore, has designed a rigorous intervention plan that meets all the requirements applicable to educational institutions in Quebec, reconciling effective treatment and absolute safety for students and staff.
Inspection outside school hours
The full inspection of the school was conducted on a Friday evening, after students and staff had left for the weekend, to ensure no disruption. The technician walked through the cafeteria kitchen, classrooms, toilets, corridors, janitor’s room and technical basement in a methodical and comprehensive manner. Pharaoh ants were present in significant quantities in the kitchen, where food residues in tile joints provided a permanent and easily accessible source of food. Active tracks were spotted along the heating pipes in the walls of several classrooms, and a large colony had taken up residence in the basement electrical room, attracted by the constant heat given off by the equipment throughout the year. Saint-Bruno-de-Montarville is adjacent to Sainte-Julie, and this old school has thick walls with many cavities typical of school buildings of the 1970s. Our exterminator in Saint-Bruno planned the intervention taking into account the constraints of the school calendar to minimize any disruption to normal educational activities and staff routines.
School-based treatment protocol
The treatment against pharaoh ants in a school does not tolerate any compromise on the safety of the students and staff present in the building. Only certified gel baits and closed, locked bait stations were used throughout the school, without exception. The stations were positioned exclusively in areas out of reach of the students: inside the low cabinets of the kitchen, in the false ceilings accessible only to maintenance staff, in the technical ducts and behind the panels of the kitchen equipment. In classrooms, baits were placed behind radiators and in the grooves of door frames, at heights physically inaccessible to children of all age groups. All teaching and maintenance staff have received a comprehensive information note explaining the protocol, the instructions to be scrupulously followed and the behaviours to be avoided during the treatment. These precautions make it possible to comply with all the regulations applicable to educational environments while ensuring the maximum effectiveness of the treatment.
Monitoring, results and institutional prevention
Follow-up visits were scheduled on Friday evenings to ensure that school activities and normal student use of the premises were never interrupted. The first visit, at three weeks, showed a high consumption of bait in the kitchen and in the technical basement, confirming the sustained activity of the colonies towards the stations. Additional baits were placed in the electrical room, where activity was still sustained due to the significant heat permanently released by the equipment. By the time of the second five-week monitoring visit, activity had decreased significantly in all sectors. The final visit, at seven weeks, confirmed the complete elimination of the infestation throughout the building. The implementation of a periodic prevention program was strongly recommended, including inspections twice per school year, ideally in August and January. Caulking of cracks and plumbing passages in the basement was carried out to permanently reduce the access routes from the outside of the building. Consult our work in another institutional institution on the South Shore for a complementary overview of our expert approach to these specialized mandates.