What can I do, short of calling a pest contol company to spray. What works good, over-the-counter wise.
It’s starting to heat up here and they are back… They hit us pretty hard last year and then, poof, they are gone. We even have them coming up where the toilet flange comes through the conrete in the middle of the slab, not near an exterior wall. Kitchen is a non stop clean-up due to 2 teen age kids that don’t understand what a clean counter means. These guys are pretty much every where now.
Any suggestions?
Replies
I have had pretty good luck with Ortho Home Defense. You spray it around the perimeter of your foundation (I think you can use it indoors as well). IIRC, my pest control guy said it was essentially just a weaker version of the chemical he would have sprayed with.
He also recommended the "Over and Out" broadcast ant killer for the lawn. We'll see how that goes...
explain to the kids that their new pet ant eater is really a new breed of allergen free cat ..
I'll try this first. then maybe the borax mixture.
Thanks everyone
The biggest trick with ants is finding out what they are eating and making bait with that. If you have sweet ants and bait them with a sugar based product it will kill the ones that eat sugar but they might come back eating proteins.
1 part boric acid (roach powder) mixed with 10-12 parts whatever food they are eating will make an effective bait.
borax best for long term.They carry it back to the nest , have a feast, they die, then the eggs hatch out and the newbies see to leftovers, have a picnic and die before they ever leave the nest or produce another generation.The chemical sprays only get one generation, so you have to keep treating.
Welcome to the Taunton University of Knowledge FHB Campus at Breaktime. where ... Excellence is its own reward!
We've had the same situation for years (I'm assuming we're talking carpenter ants). I spoke to an exterminator and he said if they're just around for a short while in the early Spring just get some spray from a hardware store....it doesn't mean an infestation. If they never leave then have the exterminator take care of it. The carpenters usually come alive in the Spring. Also get rid of wood close to the house and check for any wet or rotted house siding or trim and get rid of the water source.
If they stay there are some on-line sites that give tips on tracking them back to their nest.
"What can I do, short of calling a pest contol company to spray. What works good, over-the-counter wise"
Tie the teenagers down and cover them with something tasty for the ants.
I have the same problem with my teenagers and some ants.
I there a pest control company for teens?
Will Rogers
Edited 6/2/2009 12:42 pm by popawheelie
I have treatened and I'm about ready, No, not really. Well, maybe...
Wife says no. Darn.
the kids say it's child abuse. I still wonder how they are going to call any one when they are tied up.
I'd love to see a policeman/social services show up and not laugh when they are told that they had to clean up ants...as long as I don't leave rope marks on their wrists. Who are they going to believe? My story is they are sticky because of they are into hot honey wrestling(honey as in bees, not babes) and i'm sticking (pun intended) to it
And, today is the first day of summer vaction (deep moan)
I've had good luck with boron-based ant bait. It's basically a boron and sugar solution.
It's cheap and kills the entire colony. The only drawback is that it can take about a week to work as it relies on the workers to take the bait back to the colony as food.
Scott.
Edited 6/2/2009 1:02 pm by Scott
Is there a brand name for that product? Can I get it at the hardware store?
"There are three kinds of men: The one that learns by reading, the few who learn by observation and the rest of them have to pee on the electric fence for themselves."Will Rogers
Edited 6/2/2009 1:04 pm by popawheelie
Ya, everyone makes it. I think the latest one I bought was by Raid. It's a small red plastic squeeze bottle.Scott.
...Or, if you've got some Borax you can make it yourself:http://www.ehow.com/how_4881566_borax-ant-bait.htmlScott.
I'm going to try that. I have some Borax."There are three kinds of men: The one that learns by reading, the few who learn by observation and the rest of them have to pee on the electric fence for themselves."Will Rogers
The Orkin man that treats our building used a commercial version of that mix. The ants were steaming into the building from the grass and tree area on the public sidewalk. He followed the trail back and baited at the trees and agian next to the building. Cleaned them out in about a week. That was two years ago. For really bad investations he had a special chemical that is only available to licensed companies. Stuff is wicked bad cause it contains a very minute amount of the toxin used in nerve agents used for chemical warfare. He said the government is working off it's stockpile of the stuff by allowing it to be used in insecticides.
Scarey isn't it.
I went to the website
http://www.ehow.com/how_4881566_borax-ant-bait.html
And the mix is 1/3 honey, 1/3 sugar, and 1/3 borax.
I mixed some up and am waiting for it to dry out a bit.
They are only in one area so it should be easy.
I landscaped my front yard and they are not welcome. "There are three kinds of men: The one that learns by reading, the few who learn by observation and the rest of them have to pee on the electric fence for themselves."Will Rogers
That seems a bit heavy on the borax; I think the store-bought stuff is less than 5%. It may still work fine though, and borax is cheap enough.Good luck with it.Scott.
Kill the kids and live with the ants...
uhh, waitaminnut.
Real diazinon will do the trick. BTW Arsenic free Terro is useless.
Observe them carefully and reverse engineer their tracks.
Find the source.... one of ours was the pine trees next to the house. No more trees, no more ant problem.
Another was behind the siding on the shady side rake wall. Poor flashing details kept it moist. That's gone and so are the ants.
A La Carte Government funding... the real democracy.
I've found that different types of ants respond to different bait stations. we had ants in our kitchen that wouldn't touch any of the various bait stations that we tried, and my wife was mixing up that whit borax powder with honey and leaving that out for them, but it did nothing. Then we bought some Terro, and it got rid of this entire colony that had been coming into our kitchen for years. I was ecstatic.
http://www.terro.com/products.php?product=outdoor_ant_bait
Different ants respond to different baits, but I had great luck with this stuff called Revenge from the Vermont Country Store. Probably very similar to the borax recipes talked about already.
http://tinyurl.com/oxhyx2
Our kitchen was inundated with odorous house ants, the kind that smell like rotten coconut when you squish them. The borax-based treatment took care of them in a week or so.
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The following is the formula I used to knock down an overwhelming influx of the small, Argentine ants that are so common in the S.F. Bay Area (got it off the web, of course, but forgot to note the source):"The proportion of boric acid to sugar water is important. If you make the mixture too weak, it won't kill anything; if you make it too strong, it will kill the foragers before they can get back to the queen and deliver the poisoned food to her. We've found the following mixture to be about right: 1 cup water, 2 cups sugar, 2 tablespoons boric acid. You can make a smaller amount—you won't need much—just keep the proportions the same.
>>>if you make it too strong, it will kill the foragers before they can get back to the queen and deliver the poisoned food to her.That sounds like a good point and probably explains why the commercial products use a relatively low proportion of Borax. I found the Raid product that I've been using; it's labeled Borax 7.7%. Cheap but effective.Scott.
pretty sure junkhound (or ponytl) has some DDT, napalm and/or agent orange
1/3 ea in a plastic pail. spread liberally by handcasting
check w/one a them
glad we don't have to deal w/that in Oregon
I just tried some stuff that I got at HD.
It is a small package with four plastic cartridges filled with some kind of borate solution.
The ants were bad this year, and I didn't want the mess of pouring stuff on a cardboard square. Also didn't want to spray around the house.
I pulled the foil seal off of three of these cartridges and placed them. Two days later, the ants were gone.
I threw away the box, so I don't know what it is called.
I was hand tilling my small garden plot this weekend and must have hit a colony. There where ants everywhere all of a sudden like the surface was moving. So, grabbed a set of those bait stations from down stairs, I think they where Orkin or Black Flag. Little 2" plastic squares you brake apart, entrence on each side for them to crawl into.Put em down right in the mix of all the ants which some where red and some black ants. Watched for awhile and not one would go in. They all stopped right at the entrance and turned around, but they would crawl on the tabs or over the dome but not into it. Figured, ok maybe they won't feed right now since their in a frenzy from the colony being un-earthed. But than I noticed a group attacking and hauling off a beetle of some kind, presumably for food.Won't bother using those things anymore.