ANTS ARGH

[wallydraigle]

I'm not really sure where to put this, but this looks like a good folder.

We have ants. I have torn apart our foodstuffs, and they don't appear to be into anything like that. But the second food gets dropped on the floor, they SWARM.

I have become fanatical about keeping the floors clean since last year when we discovered we had a mouse. Not that we were slobs before, but now the floor gets a wipe-down at least once a day, usually once after each meal (our younger child is VERY enthusiastic about food, which results in some of it going on the floor, even though she's finally learned not to drop food intentionally).

The counters stay clean, and when I cook, I also clean up the floor. There is literally nothing for them to be living on except in the few minutes between the first crumb from a meal hitting the floor and the end of the meal, when I wipe it all up.

I think they're either living under our kitchen counter (our dining table is pushed right up to the counter; the kitchen is open to the living area), or they're coming through the wall from our neighbors' garage (it's right up next to ours, and I never see any ants in our own garage). I've put down traps in the very limited number of places that are safe from toddler hands and likely to be found by ants, but they don't appear to be doing any good.

Can anyone suggest anything? I hesitate to go to the apartment office because I have this paranoid fear of being seen as dirty. This is totally irrational, I know; I'm not Martha Stewart, but I'm ultra-paranoid about keeping things clean that have even the slightest possibility of attracting pests. So far, the ants aren't actually hurting us or contaminating our food. But it really gives me the willies to look down and see a piece of apple dropped seconds before just covered in tiny ants. Brrr.

[Mrs. Hermit]

Try a product named TERRO. It is a boric acid-based ant killer. Works very well. You put the liquid on a piece of cardboard, and slide in into cabinets, under the fridge, stove, etc. Most of the time it eliminates ants in less than a week for me.

[rosarugosa]

Spearmint gum -they don't like it for some reason.

[herbgeek]

A couple of drops of peppermint essential oil in your washing water should help. I also use vinegar, I read somewhere that it messes up the scent that they use to track back to their nest.

[Rosemary]

We always get a few ants when the weather hits particular patterns, such as lots of rain. I sweep them up when they find some dropped food, and wipe up their trails. They don't bother me that much, and they never go after anything that's not on the floor. Dealing with them this way rather than attacking them is just one of the ways I keep my days simple!

[Tenngal]

get on the internet and find out what kind they are. Different ants respond to different methods. Several years ago we had some carpenter ants coming into the kitchen. Saw them a few at a time. Sprayed, it made no dent, put out some bait traps still coming. Researched them and ended up buying some kind of poisen in a tube that I spend on pieces of cardboard. Suposedly this stuff would be taken back to the nest and wipe them out. In a couple of weeks they quit coming.

[Greg44]

Try a product named TERRO. It is a boric acid-based ant killer. Works very well. You put the liquid on a piece of cardboard, and slide in into cabinets, under the fridge, stove, etc. Most of the time it eliminates ants in less than a week for me.

Dittos here. We had ants for about a year - drove us crazy. We tried all sorts of raid products that the ants are suppose to go in and feed - never saw it happen. Then I spoke to a bug guy at the "Home Show" - He said to use the Terro. We find their trail, put the cardboard with Terro right in their path. They go crazy - love the stuff. We just let them come and go - usually by morning they are all gone. They have taken it back to the nest and it kills them. The small ants can set up nests all over - so when you see another trail - repeat the process. The key is to let them feed.

[Wildflower]

We used Terro for the tiny ants invading our kitchen for years. It always worked, getting rid of all of the ants within a week. We would have an infestation every spring. But this year Terro did not work and I gave it a month, so instead invested in some Raid ant bait and that stuff worked immediately - all ants gone within a couple days.

I don't know why the Terro didn't work this year. Maybe the ants had built up an immunity to it after so many years...

Never spray any type of bug spray in your kitchen cabinets. It is TOXIC!!

If you see carpenter ants in your house you have a problem. They live in wet, rotting wood and can cause the type of damage you see with termites. My parents had to have an exterminator come get rid of the carpenter ants in their house and then they had to replace the bad wood.

[Fawn]

Years ago I had ants due to three enthusiastic toddlers and food on the floor, wiped up at least once per day. I found a mixture that was 2 parts water, 1 part Bonner's soap, 1 part tabasco sauce, sprayed that on the trails and they were gone in a week or so, and no danger to the toddlers.

[loosechickens]

The active ingredient in Terro is boric acid.....so it is pretty environmentally safe. It all depends on what kind of ants you have. If they are the kind that love the Terro, it works, but other kinds of ants may pass it right by. Sometimes ants are after grease, others like sugars, some are just looking for water.

At this point you probably don't want to know how useful ants are, and that they have nothing whatsoever to do with cleanliness or lack thereof. It's been said that insects make up up to half of all the biological weight of life on earth, with ants making up a huge percentage of that.

Also, while the earth could survive quite well without humans.....without ants, we would be armpit deep in debris, dead insects and animals, etc., as ants are the hard working and unsung heroes of the earth's "cleaning crew". We need ants, earthworms and various carrion eaters really badly, and THEY are the beings that are important, not humans......

Of course, when you are in the midst of an ant invasion, none of that matters.

When we lived in Mexico, we had three distinct populations of ants, each with their own particular routes in and out, and lives lived in their parallel universe right along with us. It was impossible to get rid of them, so we chose to study them instead, and a more fascinating creature never lived, truly.

Try the Terro.....if it's the right kind of ant, it will work miracles. Good luck.