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Well I don't know if this is a good place to post this but I need help. Sometimes I find lots of ants in some parts of my house, typically in the bathroom and the recycle bin. There are lots of suggestions against cockroaches, rats and other insects but what can I do against ants?
You've got to kill the Queen - for accomplishing that, I like Terro.
What I've found that works is placing multiple small drops of it on about 1" square pieces of foil (makes cleanup easier) close to one of their anttrails, as close as possible to where they're entering. The reason for the small drops is that I've found that larger pools of the stuff dries up too much before they have a chance to consume it and bring it back to the nest, and becomes a sticky mass that they just avoid.
After a day or two, there'll be no more ants, then a 2nd or 3rd wave (I assume from the pupae & eggs that were still developing), then all gone - usually after 1-2 weeks total time.
Also - Terro is pretty much just sugar water & borax - in case you have pets around, it really won't harm them in case they accidentally ingest it.
Terro has always worked for me. I have read here that some ants prefer grease and won't eat that, but I've never had those. Are they small ants? I once had carpenter ants and that was bad news.
Depends on the ants . The small ones love Terro. Carpenter ants will go for it, but they are more interested in your rotting home structure. Get that looked into if they are Carpenter ants.
If Terro works you need to get your game plan going for very early spring and put it out around the house to hit them early. Get to them before they get in is the best way to stop this. I go around the perimeter of the house structure at the foundation and look for them to see where they are and put out the Terro. Do this and you can get a handle on it before it becomes a problem.
Diatomaceous earth - takes a while to work so you'll have to kill them on sight for a time, but works amazingly well especially if you put it out dusting of it a couple of times per season.
I also use it in my chicken yard to keep mites at bay; in the garden to keep down all sorts of crawling pests (on the soil only - not on plant leaves or blooms, since it may kill our pollinator friends!) and on my mammals to deter fleas & ticks.
Great stuff, and relatively inexpensive. 5# lasts me at least a year.
Yes, dimescous earth (I know it's spelled wrong) works great. It's a powder made of finely ground something (an earthy material), which cuts into the ants' musculoskeletons. The ants in the bathroom like the condensation after a shower. Don't let them have it. Leave the door open after a shower, or use a fan after. Try to dry it off somehow or use powder to dust it everywhere (bad for your lungs though). You could also spray any aerosol onto where you see condensation so that the ants aren't getting the pure water from the condensation.
There are two types of ants: sweet feeders and protein feeders.
You need to determine what type of ant you have and use an appropriate slow-acting bait so that the workers have time to transport the poison to the rest of colony and kill them all. If you use a general insecticide you're only going to kill the ants that you can see. The same logic applies to diatomaceous earth (DE). It's a much-hyped "hippy" solution that doesn't really work beyond where it is spread. We have little fire ants (LFA) here and they literally build bridges over the DE using their dead comrades. Basically they laugh at it. Even when DE does work in the particular place it's spread, it stops working if it gets wet. It does start working again if it can dry completely.
Fast-killing baits like the Terro stuff might leave you satisfying evidence of dead ants but they can be counter-productive. Some ant nests will just expand if more workers leave than come back. It depends on the species. But if the poison bait doesn't make it to the colony, the colony survives.
Last edited by terracore; 01-17-2021 at 08:23 PM..
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