We’re getting ants in the house - small, black, all-purpose ants - and my wife absolutely refuses to use poison of any kind in the house, so we’re spraying a 50/50 mixture of vinegar and water all around the perimeter of the first floor. It’s helping, and I think long-term we’ll be rid of the ants, but I’m not getting that instant gratification like I would with stronger anti-ant stuff. If you know of any way to fend off ants without using poison, please let me know. We had 'em last year, too, but I thought I had beaten them.
I assume you are actively working on figuring out how they are getting in, right?
How does she feel about borax?
We’re on a slab, and I think they’re just coming in from the garden. I don’t know what she’d think of borax. If the kids got into it, would we have a problem?
7th generation makes a non-toxic, organic ant killer. You can get it at home depot and it works quickly and effectively.
Borax works quite effectively. If you don’t have to worry about kids or pets getting into it.
Otherwise, bad idea.
My 100 yr old granny taught me a fix for this when I was living in a yucky student apartment at university. I had pets and really didn’t want to use poison either. And I honestly didn’t think I’d win the battle as there were so many cracks and gaps for them to come in through.
She told me to buy a cucumber and peel off the skin in little strips, like with a potato peeler. Then jam those strips into every crack and gap and anywhere I was seeing ants. The problem being so wide in my place I needed 2 cucumbers and it took a couple of days to find all the spots.
Apparently this works because cucumbers grow on the ground and their skin contains some sort of natural repellent to keep ants off. I was worried they would rot or something but they just dried out and yet continued to work.
It worked so wonderfully I have never purchased any type of ant repellent since. I lived in that apartment for 5 more years and I never had to repeat the process nor did I ever see another ant.
So maybe tell your wife my story and give it try.
And, you can have a lovely cucumber salad with dinner!
I’ve got them too, but I’m using ant traps. Or I will after I go to the store today. Meanwhile my two small kids are lovingly collecting them for pets and inadvertantly squishing each one in the process. This is a change from last week, where the insect of choice was ladybugs. At least the ants don’t smell when squished.
I had great success getting rid of ants in my college apartment with no poison.
I couldn’t afford ant traps. Fortunately I also had lots of those tiny wood spiders.
Eventually (it took about 2 weeks) I had a lot of wood spiders that were fat and happy with a collection of dead ant bodies under their little corner webs.
Tell your wife to get some spiders. Or preschoolers.
Ok, the best way to get rid of ants (IME) without chemicals is to buy a box of chalk – whatever’s cheapest – and smash it up to chalk dust. Sprinkle the dust anywhere you see them trailing. Ants will not cross a fine powder (chalk dust is the best I have found), so you have stopped the invasion. I guess where they won’t (can’t?) cross the dust, they end up dying of starvation or lonelieness and one day, you will notice Poof! they’re gone. This has worked for me numerous times, you just have to make sure you sprinkle the dust all along the areas where they are coming in – I always just made a dust line across every window/door threshold to be sure.
You’re never rid of ants until you kill the queen. Spraying or otherwise poisoning the visible ones accomplishes nothing. “Black all-purpose ants” foraging in your house are a type of ant that would like sweets. The product you need is Terro. It comes packaged several different ways. Regardless of how it is to be deployed, it is a syrup of borax and sugars. You allow the foragers to fill up on it and take it back to the nest to share the bounty with the rest of the family. In a few days, no ants. The stuff is pretty well harmless to pets, kids, and other pests who you don’t want poisoned even if they consume it. I used the trays to fend off an invasion of big black bastards last summer. It was disgusting watching a constant stream of them marching back and forth from the baits, but in a couple days they were all kaput.
Anteater as a pet?
Cinnamon. Last summer, I had to put my cat food dish inside a ring of cinnamon. But no ants. They started coming in the window, at the head of my bed which is a futon on the floor. There is nothing more heinous than being awakened in the night by the sensation of ANT!!! I sprinkled cinnamon along the sill. No ants.
Then, they started coming in a couple months later through a crack in the wood of the doorjamb downstairs. (clever buggers!) I made a paste of cinnamon and water, and stuffed it in the crack like putty. Haven’t come back since.
The volatile oils in cinnamon interfere with their pheromone-based communications.
See here for many pictures about just such a solution.
Sailboat
I find the nest, jam a stick all the way down into it, then pour boiling or near-boiling water down the hole. 100% effective, no toxins, no fuss, and it works on everything from native black ants to massive fire ant colonies.
Probably won’t place in the Westminister Kennel Club competition, but so cool. I am not usually a fan of animals in sweaters, but they wear them well. When you go out for walksies, you will get noticed. That’s for sure. So cool.
We, too are experiencing an Ant Invasion. We’ve tried ant traps, and some liquid stuff with borax in it. It’s not working fast enough! I have borax and white sugar, too, but Googling isn’t telling me if it should be dry or do I make a syrup? Sure. NOW Google tells me to make a syrup. I swear it didn’t yesterday. It has to be kept off the floor, or Clover the dog might get into it. The little beggars are fine at crawling up onto the counters (ugh) so I can place whatever on the counter. A dry mixture seems to be ignored so far.
I am not going to search for the nest. We’re in a vintage double-wide, and underneath is spider heaven. I’m not going under there, no thank you. I’ve been gardening/cleaning up the perimeter like mad today (and have the muscle aches to prove it) and haven’t seen anything that looks like a nest outside.
Yes, it’s poison, but I’ve had no problems and no failures using those small plastic poison bait things. They’re cheap and they’re effective for a very long time. I have cats and while they bat the things around occasionally, they’ve never had issues with the “poison”. Heck, to stop the play, I simply jammed it partially under the wall edging to hold it in place.
I use the Terro bait traps, too. It doesn’t get rid of them immediately, it might take a couple days, and it seems they eventually come back. The last time I got new bait traps that are a syrup in a little plastic tray that you cut a small opening in it for the ants, so far these have kept them away for a while. You do have to make sure you hide them from kids and pets but they are easy to slip behind or under things on countertops.
Swabbing lamb’s blood on your lintels and door posts also helps.
Washing up liquid kills the buggers.
Dilute on a 15% liquid, the rest water
Dish soap?
I’d agree with just about any detergent, borax, dish soap etc. Anything that could interfere with their chemical communications.
I’ve also used cinnamon. Sprinkled under the sink and cabinets and around baseboards. This works especially well with the tiny little black ones.
Boric acid is a “reasonably” safe general pesticide for just about any bug. It tends have a laxitive effect on higher life forms (discovered after my german shepard ate some Terro and turned into a furry fecal fountain) so be carefull.