Killing Ants: What actually works?

[Mainiac Mat]

For Carpenter Ants, you need to get the nest and the queen... best way to do so is poison that they take back to the nest.

This stuff works great...



It ain't cheep and you won't find it at the big box or hardware store, as it's commercial duty stuff. But, you can get it on line.

 

[ncfireman1918]

Termidor SC, it's what exterminators use.

Came here to say this. I've also used Taurus SC. Same ingredient as Termidor and usually cheaper. I spray the perimeter of the house according to the instructions, and no ants for the season. It also supplements my termite specific pest control.

 

[Ryanbabz71]

Borox and sugar solution is the best I have found

https://www.craftymorning.com/3-ingredient-ant-killer-recipe/

I didn’t use cotton balls but put a small plastic tray with it in.




Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

 

[97tj-neil]

I killed a lot of them with a magnifying glass when I was a younger man.

 

[lolchk]

I would like to advise you to use a vacuum cleaner, does vacuuming kill ants ? Of course! One of the standard ant control methods is a vacuum cleaner. While you can easily get rid of ant colonies with a vacuum cleaner, you need to find the root of the problem. Yes, you have to find their trail. Follow the trail of ants in your home to find out their trend. You can then start vacuuming the ant tracks to make sure you remove all the ants. So the main thing is to find out where they come from and eliminate this accumulation with the help of poison or similar insect repellent.

 

[jabberwoki]

Terro.

 

[southalabama]

Ever tried a vacuum cleaner on devils spawn known as fire ants ??

 

[rayra]

seconding diatomaceous earth inside the house. Human safe. Pet safe. Anything with an exoskeleton can't handle it. Under a microscope the diatoms are like those nasty sticker balls that get snared on your shoelaces, it's like caltrops for crawling shelled bugs. So trickle it in all their access holes where they are coming in. Be sure to obliterate their inside pheremone paths and troops inside with ammonia-containing windex and clean up their corpses. If you can find their nest outside, pour ammonia or acetone down the hole. They breathe thru holes in their shells, they can't not breathe, so gas them. Flood the next with a noxious solvent and kill the queen too. FYI, ammonia is a fertilizer

 

[Fatboy148]

Borox and sugar solution is the best I have found

https://www.craftymorning.com/3-ingredient-ant-killer-recipe/

I didn’t use cotton balls but put a small plastic tray with it in.

This, it's way less expensive to make your own than buying the little ant traps at the store. A box of borax will last a long time and it wort spoil. I use about one part Borax to four-five parts sugar and add enough water to make a paste out of it. When I find hills in the yard, I just drop about 1/2 a cup of the mix on top of the hill and they aren't there in a couple days. In the house, track them back as far as you can and put your paste there, they will find it. Take some vinegar and spray their trail, it messes them up so they can't following the trail. The vinegar will also kill them but it will only kill the ones you can spray so the paste works better for me.

 

[Thorold]

Really good luck with Wilson Ant Bait this year. Ants were munching on the dock.

https://www.canadiantire.ca/en/pdp/wilson-antout-liquid-ant-bait-100-ml-0593824p.html

 

[MBfreak]

The totally fantastic theoretical physician Richard Feynman describes a method to get rid of ants in his book
" Surely you are joking , Mr Feynman"
They are easy to fool, at least for a person like Mr Feynman.
Try it.
And the book is very interesting.
He was probably the most brilliant mind in the last century!

Ola

 

[MerlinsBeard]

I've had success with Terro. However, in the basement, I had ants coming in a corner of the basement but stayed on the cinderblock wall. There was a small but somewhat sizable gap between the cinder block wall and the slab so ants rarely crossed over to the Terro I put on the slab. I ended up taking a Q-tip with Terro and dabbing the cinder block wall along the path the ants used. I'd basically try to dab a small bit of Terro ahead of each ant I found.

I did this several times a day when I could and it took a couple of weeks, but they dwindled down to zero for 2-3 days in a row. At that point I cleaned out the caulk in the corner and re-caulked and so far so good.

 

[no704]

DE is the way to go! The baits work, but they are baits, expect an amazing up tick for a few days before seeing results. And clean up is worse. Just sprinkle de around.

 

[tearapin]

Boric acid will get them. Mix it into coca cola. It is not instantaneous, but once they feed the queen it is done.

 

[FredWanaker]

looks like old thread accidentally posted in.

 

[rburke65]

I use my big foot!

 

[welder4956]

We had a terrible problem with sugar ants getting in the house last year and I used Advion gel bait outside around the foundation and deck.
It worked pretty well by itself, but we still had a few coming in the house. I started spraying with Raid Ant & Roach Spray outside around the doors and foundation in combination with the Advion and we have not seen a single ant in the house this year.

 

[oldwino]

Pretty effective

 

[brownbagg]

talcum powder

 

[PoorUB]

I spray the foundation of my house every spring with Tempo SC Ultra. Not one ant in the place. If I don't spray we got hundreds of them.