Carpenter Ant Treatment Concerns
In the past 4 days we've started seeing what everyone assures me is carpenter ants by size and geographic location alone, though we're not seeing any dust piles and can't find any evidence of moisture damage in the house for now. We are getting about 15-25 ants in the house a day, localized to a specific and thankfully manageable part of the house, mostly, and randomly crawling about, not in steady lines. I've called professionals (I'm not sure if I'm allowed to share company name here even though I have nothing bad to say about them) we had worked with before to take care of our mouse problem and they confirmed by my description they were confident it was carpenter ants that were probably nesting in our roof (I don't know why they think this, but we do have a tree touching the roof of that part of the house that we also keep meaning to cut the branches of). They told me they'd come out within the next week to treat the exterior of the house with something that would kill the colony by tainting ants as they walk through it, which should take up to 35 days to work, but for our own health, they do not do interior repellant, so we may actually see an uptick in activity in the house at first while it is working. They were very clear that the work would be outdoors only, so I don't think they're including bait as part of their treatment? And told us that we can go ahead and kill the ants in our home.
Knowing that their treatment is not going to work right away and not wanting the ants to find the kitchen and become a nuisance by actually getting into anything important or difficult to clean, we've been killing any ants by squishing them and I've been spraying peppermint repellant in the house to keep them confused, but of course, with the excess googling I'm now nervous that I'm going to make the problem worse by encouraging the ants to bud or split off into new colonies or whatever it is called. Is this an effective way to control the problem before they get here and while the treatment is taking its time to work? Am I going to make the problem worse or interfere with their treatment in any way by doing this? Is there any way to manage the ants while the treatment is working that won't involve getting them to bud?
We have not been seeing a significant increase in ants in the last 2 days, (it went from 1 to 5 to 20 rapidly and seems to be hovering there, but granted the problem is relatively new and it's been hot which the exterminators said makes them more active but is going to cool down soon), so I'm wondering if the repellant is maybe actually helpful.
P.S. I am aware that I am probably unnecessarily anxious, but "35 days and activity will increase" was really scary to hear, because it means we won't even know if the treatment is working for at least 2 weeks.