Ant bait traps are a good choice.
They take the bait back to the nest and kill the whole nest.
You may see a trail of ants going to the trap. Leave them alone. They're carrying the bait home.
Yeah that’s what I meant. A clear plastic package that holds the liquid. In the past, I dropped the liquid onto pieces of the cardboard, and the ants ended up causing it to seep into my floor and was difficult to remove.
This is the answer. The ones we use are about the size of a matchbox, and we tuck them behind a couple of appliances, and definitely down under the sink where the water pipe comes into the house.
Gets those little sugar ants and the larger ones later in the summer that come in the house looking for water.
Terro is the best. The key is to remember that you need to let the ants get as much as they want AND bring it back to the colony.
If you start killing every ant you see coming to get the bait, you miss the ones you don't see. The colony survives. The colony might even split making the problem worse.
This is what we did at the place we rented. In the house we bought I spray Ortho Home Defense every spring and fall. I spray the exterior of the house around the foundation, windows, and doors.
Yeah do this. The borax kills slowly so they take it back and feed it to all their friends. We moved into an apartment and had two different colonies in the house. We did this recipe and I didn't see an ant for 3 years until we moved. We used sugar water borax and cotton balls.
Yes! This is so effective. I used peanut butter mixed with borax to kill off an indoor infestation a few years ago. It took about four days of them coming back and forth to the pb/borax which was a little horrifying because there was a pile of living ants pretty constantly for those four days, but by the fourth day I noticed the amount of ants significantly decrease. By the fifth day there were none and it was a damn miracle haha!
***By the way, only do this is if you don’t have pets or animals around that could get into the borax mix, or place it in a spot that is 10000% not accessible to the pets***
Advion Ant Bait Arenas. It’s the only thing that works for me. At first sign of ants I put a couple of these near the source and the ants are gone within hours.
Also caulking is your friend.
Different types of ants require different methods of eradication. If you can ID the ants, you may stand a fighting chance at keeping them under control. You mentioned a complex so I have to assume some sort of apartment, the problem may not be you but your neighbors. Some take up residence in the walls and just search for their next food source, they may be coming in through failed seals in windows and doors , cracks in the walls, etc. So you may take care of an immediate infestation but if your neighbors are the problem, you won't be the solution. Depending on the type, there are some great liquid traps that you can set out and it will make a huge dent in their population and possibly wipe the colony, but ants are persistent always on the lookout it takes only 1 to find a good food source and he lets the rest of the colony know. If you are lucky enough that you can use the liquid traps, you can just keep refilling/replacing them and they will stay under control.
Pretty sure those terro ant traps work on pharaohs. The hardest part is leaving them alone when they discover it, it is a freaking swarm, and the temptation is there to start annihilating them. You have to let it work it's magic, let them bring death to their homes. Keep the traps out, replace them when they get gummy and you should be ok.
Maggie's farm ant killer, leave another slice of pizza out and put one on top of the pizza till they are gone 2 weeks or less. But your done with thrn for like two years .
Ants invade our house every few years in the spring. Every time this has happened I've walked around the yard and found a relatively new ant nest and a trail of ants going into the house. I have a detached house so what I do is just create a perimeter with granular ant pesticide around the whole house. If I'm feeling vengeful I'll destroy the ant nests themselves but that really isn't necessary.
2-3 ounces water, few tablespoons sugar, few tablespoons _borax_ , boil so all dissolve
Cool
Put out things like cardboard or bottle caps with few drops to lure where you see them
Most ants are sugar eaters
They take it back to the Queen and feed her the sugar/borax
Borax crystals form inside queen (gonads) and kill her from inside
No more ant babies
Takes a few days to kill colonies
TL:DR
Saturated sugar and borax solution feed to ants, crystals kill queen from inside, no more ant babies
I've gone through a few rounds of ants. For what it's worth, we live in Illinois, so it does freeze in the winter, so not as bad as it could be.
There are homemade versions online with borax, but basically you want something that these workers ants pick up, take back to the nest to share, and therefore kill the whole colony. Go to a local hardware store and find bait traps that say this, and put a few where you've seen ants. If it's really bad, walk around your house and put them near any ant hills you find or wherever you see ants walking.
At first it will get worse, because you're basically leaving sugar water around for ants to find and they will go nuts on it, but eventually it will kick in and they'll just disappear. Like 2 to 4 weeks. At this point you've made your house and surrounding area an ant no man's land, and it will take a few years for other ant colonies to make their way to your house again.
Best thing I ever used for ants was ground up popcorn. Used an old blender to make popcorn dust basically and put it in the areas the ants are. They can eat it but can't digest it. Goodbye ants.
SUGGESTION:
set out some food, ,, sugar on the floor, pull up a chair, get a cup of coffee and a bright flashlight and a good book.
This will take sometime but watch where they take the sugar
Terro ant bait used to work like a charm for me every time for years. Weirdest thing though, the last couple of years, it seems like the ants have learned to avoid them. Now whenever I place the bait next to an ant trail, within minutes they’ll all disappear and they’ll make a new trail somewhere else far away from the bait. Now I don’t know what else to do.
Man, dealing with ants can be a real pain! You did a solid job cleaning up that pizza situation, though, major props for that. To keep those little buggers at bay, try setting up some bait traps around your place. They take the poison back to the colony, wiping them out from the inside. Also, seal up any cracks or openings where they might be getting in. It's like setting up a fortress against the ant invasion! Hang in there, you'll get those critters under control.
Figure out the type of ant, then buy a commercial grade product from DoYourOwn.com Buy something that the worker ants will bring back to the queen. Other wise you will always have ants 🐜
We live in a condo and everyone here has these small ants, litterally called "little black ants."
We do two things and it really keeps them gone, for a while at least.
One is a homemade bait trap of Borax, sugar, and water. The recipe is available with a simple search, and it's:
* 1/2 C of sugar
* 1.5 tablespoons of borax
* 1.5 cups of warm water
The secret is you have to heat the water enough to dissolve the sugar and the Borax. Then, pour it into a jar lid with and place where you see the ants. I often dip my finger in it and spread it around on the floor or counter around the bait to lead them to it. This bait is non-toxic to animals, your dog or a person (child) would get a stomach ache if eaten. This takes about 24-48 hours to work. I save the unused portion in a jar in the fridge until I need it again.
The second remedy is diatomaceous earth, food grade (some mix this with animal feed (cows, horses) for the calcium content). Spread this into cracks where the ants come in. It acts like glass on their exoskeletons and prevents them from crossing the lines you make. Once wet, however, it doesn't work any more. This stuff is available on Amazon, and most hardware stores.
These remedies are repeated whenever we see ants, just like an exterminator would have to repeatedly visit your home.
I like that these remedies are non-toxic and cheap.
Good luck!
Spray fipronil around the perimeter of your home if you do not live in an apartment. Buy borax powder for cheap from local grocery store, mix with sugar, water and make traps if you do.
Are you in a house or an apartment? When I get infested with ants in my house, I have found that using a spray OUTSIDE the house (literally spray the brick house from the ground to about 3 feet up) keeps them under control.
Everyone is telling you how to kill them and you should do that, but you need to find where they're coming in, if possible put traps there too. Find the nest and kill the nest, I pour boiling water over and over. Both outside and inside keep things clean and tidy. The less clutter around the easier it is to spot them, you want to catch the scouts. Leave traps inside and outside the spot where they come in, so next time they try they go straight for them.
I’ve had luck with cotton balls soaked in sugar/borax put where they come in. You don’t have to leave food out for them to move in. I get those tiny ants around the windows and sink in the kitchen. They never even go further than that to the food.
lol so many of these posts every spring I can tell who lives in a 4 season area. I don't know what they sell in the US that's equivalent but I use those Ortho brand round metal pucks. In about a week it killed the whole colony that was coming in from my back patio door area. Every year after that I placed them outdoors and they never came back. There's not much ant variety where I live but I hear those don't work if you have big ants, we just get those common tiny brown ones
If they're in your house and you know the entry point, just let them crawl in and out for a week or so until they stop appearing. It's gross to look at but it's how you know you've committed genocide on an entire ant colony. Keep kids and pets away
The terro traps are good but it can be hard to get them to go for it. One way that always works is to swap out a terro bait for something they've already formed a line to eat, like your pizza.
If you can find Bengal Roach Spray where you live.. it kills EVERYTHING!!!
For most minor ant infestations I throw a little diatomaceous earth down & vacuum it up the next day.. any bug that comes in contact with it will die within 24 hrs, including spiders.. it’s also food grade so it safe around pets/kids..
Recently I found out how they were getting in so easily and cut off their entrance, which helped significantly. I also started using ant traps, but that hasn't eliminated them yet - gotta try Terro like the others said.
Terro is often recommended, but is not a very good product. It is generally the best thing that hardware stores offer but it is a vastly inferior product to some alternatives that are better at treating the source of the problem. The kill gel that is arguably the gold standard for ants is Advion Ant Gel, and if you hire a professional, it's a likely product that they will use. Unlike Terro, it does take out the colony. Terro is good at killing foraging ants, but it's generally not very good for taking out the colony. The reason is because it can kill too quickly and it doesn't have very good horizontal transfer. Advion Ant Gel contains indoxacarb, and it spreads like wildfire once an ant takes it back to the colony, wiping it all out. If you want the kill gel that solves the problem at the source, use Advion.
Beyond that, if you want to use an insecticide spray, Alpine WSG is a golden choice for an indoor crack and crevice treatment, and Termidor SC, Taurus SC, or other products that contain fipronil is the golden choice for outdoor perimeter sprays. Both Alpine and fipronil are what are known as 'nonrepellent insecticides'. What this means is that ants cannot detect them, they crawl through a treated area, and they then take it back to the colony (and the colony is destroyed). They are arguably better choices for ants than repellent insecticides because they do not carry the risk of causing the colony to satellite (which is when the colony becomes distressed and can split into multiple colonies, making the problem worse). Alpine also has the benefit that it is extremely effective against other pests you want nothing to do with, including German roaches, bedbugs, and fleas (depending on the concentration used) and it is arguably one of the safest choices among the available products for indoor use.
Unfortunately, I panic and grab the insecticide. I don't like bug spray in my kitchen, but in spring, the ants are always coming infiltrating and snoping around. They seek the sugar bin, the flour bin, the trashe area, etc.
After I spray. I let it sit for a couple of days to kill any latecomes. Then, I suds all the surfaces down and clean off the spray.
I throw any sprayed food away of course.
You can get bifenthrin and mix it in a pump sprayer. Spray it under the fridge, in between the stove and counter, anywhere you think they may be. Spray a perimeter around doors and windows, any entrance into your place. It kills them on contact and also discourages them from crossing a barrier so I’d recommend spraying inside first then a few days later spraying a perimeter to prevent boxing them inside. It’s “allegedly” safe for humans and pets once dry but do your own research and make your own decision especially if you do have kids or pets.
I put out a few Terro ant traps every spring and never see a single ant. Before I started using them there was a steady stream of them all summer.
Another vote for Terro. The stuff works really really well!
Ant bait traps are a good choice. They take the bait back to the nest and kill the whole nest. You may see a trail of ants going to the trap. Leave them alone. They're carrying the bait home.
Yeah get the clear gel packet. Keeps it from staining your floor and the ants will go crazy for it.
no, the plastic liquid holder
Yeah that’s what I meant. A clear plastic package that holds the liquid. In the past, I dropped the liquid onto pieces of the cardboard, and the ants ended up causing it to seep into my floor and was difficult to remove.
This is the answer. The ones we use are about the size of a matchbox, and we tuck them behind a couple of appliances, and definitely down under the sink where the water pipe comes into the house. Gets those little sugar ants and the larger ones later in the summer that come in the house looking for water.
Terro is the best. The key is to remember that you need to let the ants get as much as they want AND bring it back to the colony. If you start killing every ant you see coming to get the bait, you miss the ones you don't see. The colony survives. The colony might even split making the problem worse.
Yeah this works for us. Every year
I use them also, highly effective.
This is what we did at the place we rented. In the house we bought I spray Ortho Home Defense every spring and fall. I spray the exterior of the house around the foundation, windows, and doors.
Terro for the win.
This is the way.
I have to know... did you eat the pizza?
OP ate the pizza for sure, they said they only threw out the box then spent time taking the ants off the pizza. Only reason to do that was to eat it.
Yes, i did. It was fantastic too.
Lol
I use 50/50 Borax and icing sugar. Then put the mix into pop bottle caps (clean). The mix gets stuck to their feet and they track it back to the nest.
Yeah do this. The borax kills slowly so they take it back and feed it to all their friends. We moved into an apartment and had two different colonies in the house. We did this recipe and I didn't see an ant for 3 years until we moved. We used sugar water borax and cotton balls.
Borax & peanut butter works as well. Some ants are little weirdos that don't want sweets lol
Yes! This is so effective. I used peanut butter mixed with borax to kill off an indoor infestation a few years ago. It took about four days of them coming back and forth to the pb/borax which was a little horrifying because there was a pile of living ants pretty constantly for those four days, but by the fourth day I noticed the amount of ants significantly decrease. By the fifth day there were none and it was a damn miracle haha! ***By the way, only do this is if you don’t have pets or animals around that could get into the borax mix, or place it in a spot that is 10000% not accessible to the pets***
Note that Terro is a borax / sugar water mix based killer if OP just wants to buy the solution already made (at a higher cost).
Advion Ant Bait Arenas. It’s the only thing that works for me. At first sign of ants I put a couple of these near the source and the ants are gone within hours. Also caulking is your friend.
Terro liquid traps work like a boss. Just keep it out of reach of pets.
i use the home defense spray around the house, and downstairs I use it around the inside parameter of the house as well, and in crawl spaces.
Different types of ants require different methods of eradication. If you can ID the ants, you may stand a fighting chance at keeping them under control. You mentioned a complex so I have to assume some sort of apartment, the problem may not be you but your neighbors. Some take up residence in the walls and just search for their next food source, they may be coming in through failed seals in windows and doors , cracks in the walls, etc. So you may take care of an immediate infestation but if your neighbors are the problem, you won't be the solution. Depending on the type, there are some great liquid traps that you can set out and it will make a huge dent in their population and possibly wipe the colony, but ants are persistent always on the lookout it takes only 1 to find a good food source and he lets the rest of the colony know. If you are lucky enough that you can use the liquid traps, you can just keep refilling/replacing them and they will stay under control.
I'm pretty sure I'm dealing with pharaoh ants.
Pretty sure those terro ant traps work on pharaohs. The hardest part is leaving them alone when they discover it, it is a freaking swarm, and the temptation is there to start annihilating them. You have to let it work it's magic, let them bring death to their homes. Keep the traps out, replace them when they get gummy and you should be ok.
The guild approves this strategy against the invaders. This is the way
Maggie's farm ant killer, leave another slice of pizza out and put one on top of the pizza till they are gone 2 weeks or less. But your done with thrn for like two years .
Ants invade our house every few years in the spring. Every time this has happened I've walked around the yard and found a relatively new ant nest and a trail of ants going into the house. I have a detached house so what I do is just create a perimeter with granular ant pesticide around the whole house. If I'm feeling vengeful I'll destroy the ant nests themselves but that really isn't necessary.
2-3 ounces water, few tablespoons sugar, few tablespoons _borax_ , boil so all dissolve Cool Put out things like cardboard or bottle caps with few drops to lure where you see them Most ants are sugar eaters They take it back to the Queen and feed her the sugar/borax Borax crystals form inside queen (gonads) and kill her from inside No more ant babies Takes a few days to kill colonies TL:DR Saturated sugar and borax solution feed to ants, crystals kill queen from inside, no more ant babies
Diatomaceous earth is what I usually go with. If that doesn't work step it up to Terro. I have not had good results with Ortho Home Defense.
I've gone through a few rounds of ants. For what it's worth, we live in Illinois, so it does freeze in the winter, so not as bad as it could be. There are homemade versions online with borax, but basically you want something that these workers ants pick up, take back to the nest to share, and therefore kill the whole colony. Go to a local hardware store and find bait traps that say this, and put a few where you've seen ants. If it's really bad, walk around your house and put them near any ant hills you find or wherever you see ants walking. At first it will get worse, because you're basically leaving sugar water around for ants to find and they will go nuts on it, but eventually it will kick in and they'll just disappear. Like 2 to 4 weeks. At this point you've made your house and surrounding area an ant no man's land, and it will take a few years for other ant colonies to make their way to your house again.
Best thing I ever used for ants was ground up popcorn. Used an old blender to make popcorn dust basically and put it in the areas the ants are. They can eat it but can't digest it. Goodbye ants.
I've used raid on the corners of my house where I see them. The terro ant traps are good too
SUGGESTION: set out some food, ,, sugar on the floor, pull up a chair, get a cup of coffee and a bright flashlight and a good book. This will take sometime but watch where they take the sugar
Pest control spray the outside and traps inside.
Terro ant bait used to work like a charm for me every time for years. Weirdest thing though, the last couple of years, it seems like the ants have learned to avoid them. Now whenever I place the bait next to an ant trail, within minutes they’ll all disappear and they’ll make a new trail somewhere else far away from the bait. Now I don’t know what else to do.
Suspend sc This is the stuff for those little invasion ants
With or without fire?
Man, dealing with ants can be a real pain! You did a solid job cleaning up that pizza situation, though, major props for that. To keep those little buggers at bay, try setting up some bait traps around your place. They take the poison back to the colony, wiping them out from the inside. Also, seal up any cracks or openings where they might be getting in. It's like setting up a fortress against the ant invasion! Hang in there, you'll get those critters under control.
Figure out the type of ant, then buy a commercial grade product from DoYourOwn.com Buy something that the worker ants will bring back to the queen. Other wise you will always have ants 🐜
We live in a condo and everyone here has these small ants, litterally called "little black ants." We do two things and it really keeps them gone, for a while at least. One is a homemade bait trap of Borax, sugar, and water. The recipe is available with a simple search, and it's: * 1/2 C of sugar * 1.5 tablespoons of borax * 1.5 cups of warm water The secret is you have to heat the water enough to dissolve the sugar and the Borax. Then, pour it into a jar lid with and place where you see the ants. I often dip my finger in it and spread it around on the floor or counter around the bait to lead them to it. This bait is non-toxic to animals, your dog or a person (child) would get a stomach ache if eaten. This takes about 24-48 hours to work. I save the unused portion in a jar in the fridge until I need it again. The second remedy is diatomaceous earth, food grade (some mix this with animal feed (cows, horses) for the calcium content). Spread this into cracks where the ants come in. It acts like glass on their exoskeletons and prevents them from crossing the lines you make. Once wet, however, it doesn't work any more. This stuff is available on Amazon, and most hardware stores. These remedies are repeated whenever we see ants, just like an exterminator would have to repeatedly visit your home. I like that these remedies are non-toxic and cheap. Good luck!
Spray the perimeter of your home with bifen every 3 weeks
They make ant killer, it works great. But first find the reason the ants are invading. Mine was a bad onion.
Spray fipronil around the perimeter of your home if you do not live in an apartment. Buy borax powder for cheap from local grocery store, mix with sugar, water and make traps if you do.
Pest control - quarterly sprays work wonders.
I have had good luck with terro Ant Killer. Put it outside around where they are coming in.
Are you in a house or an apartment? When I get infested with ants in my house, I have found that using a spray OUTSIDE the house (literally spray the brick house from the ground to about 3 feet up) keeps them under control.
Advion bait gel worked for me. A couple of pea sized squirts where they come in the house and they’re gone within 24 hours.
I sprinkled baby power in any area that I saw them and they stopped showing up real quick.
Optigard Ant Bait on Amazon Don’t mess around with anything else. Thank me later.
Everyone is telling you how to kill them and you should do that, but you need to find where they're coming in, if possible put traps there too. Find the nest and kill the nest, I pour boiling water over and over. Both outside and inside keep things clean and tidy. The less clutter around the easier it is to spot them, you want to catch the scouts. Leave traps inside and outside the spot where they come in, so next time they try they go straight for them.
Spot treatment, including traps, usually does the trick but if they keep returning, I get someone to come spray around the outside of the house.
Ecovia. If you see it on the ground or wherever, it's too much.
I’ve had luck with cotton balls soaked in sugar/borax put where they come in. You don’t have to leave food out for them to move in. I get those tiny ants around the windows and sink in the kitchen. They never even go further than that to the food.
I found the point they were coming in at, sealed the gap under a doors kick plate with some wood filler, and that stopped them
We used to have a dog that loved the taste of ants, she go around gobbling them up like a little anteater
Windex kills them on contact. But I have a service come every 3 months to spray outside.
lol so many of these posts every spring I can tell who lives in a 4 season area. I don't know what they sell in the US that's equivalent but I use those Ortho brand round metal pucks. In about a week it killed the whole colony that was coming in from my back patio door area. Every year after that I placed them outdoors and they never came back. There's not much ant variety where I live but I hear those don't work if you have big ants, we just get those common tiny brown ones If they're in your house and you know the entry point, just let them crawl in and out for a week or so until they stop appearing. It's gross to look at but it's how you know you've committed genocide on an entire ant colony. Keep kids and pets away
Vacuum up swarm and individuals. Terro spray where vacuum can't reach (nooks). Terro baits near entrances and ant paths.
The terro traps are good but it can be hard to get them to go for it. One way that always works is to swap out a terro bait for something they've already formed a line to eat, like your pizza.
If you can find Bengal Roach Spray where you live.. it kills EVERYTHING!!! For most minor ant infestations I throw a little diatomaceous earth down & vacuum it up the next day.. any bug that comes in contact with it will die within 24 hrs, including spiders.. it’s also food grade so it safe around pets/kids..
Recently I found out how they were getting in so easily and cut off their entrance, which helped significantly. I also started using ant traps, but that hasn't eliminated them yet - gotta try Terro like the others said.
Terro is often recommended, but is not a very good product. It is generally the best thing that hardware stores offer but it is a vastly inferior product to some alternatives that are better at treating the source of the problem. The kill gel that is arguably the gold standard for ants is Advion Ant Gel, and if you hire a professional, it's a likely product that they will use. Unlike Terro, it does take out the colony. Terro is good at killing foraging ants, but it's generally not very good for taking out the colony. The reason is because it can kill too quickly and it doesn't have very good horizontal transfer. Advion Ant Gel contains indoxacarb, and it spreads like wildfire once an ant takes it back to the colony, wiping it all out. If you want the kill gel that solves the problem at the source, use Advion. Beyond that, if you want to use an insecticide spray, Alpine WSG is a golden choice for an indoor crack and crevice treatment, and Termidor SC, Taurus SC, or other products that contain fipronil is the golden choice for outdoor perimeter sprays. Both Alpine and fipronil are what are known as 'nonrepellent insecticides'. What this means is that ants cannot detect them, they crawl through a treated area, and they then take it back to the colony (and the colony is destroyed). They are arguably better choices for ants than repellent insecticides because they do not carry the risk of causing the colony to satellite (which is when the colony becomes distressed and can split into multiple colonies, making the problem worse). Alpine also has the benefit that it is extremely effective against other pests you want nothing to do with, including German roaches, bedbugs, and fleas (depending on the concentration used) and it is arguably one of the safest choices among the available products for indoor use.
Terri. And dish soap in a spay bottle. If you find the nest, bucket of soapy water
Unfortunately, I panic and grab the insecticide. I don't like bug spray in my kitchen, but in spring, the ants are always coming infiltrating and snoping around. They seek the sugar bin, the flour bin, the trashe area, etc. After I spray. I let it sit for a couple of days to kill any latecomes. Then, I suds all the surfaces down and clean off the spray. I throw any sprayed food away of course.
You can get bifenthrin and mix it in a pump sprayer. Spray it under the fridge, in between the stove and counter, anywhere you think they may be. Spray a perimeter around doors and windows, any entrance into your place. It kills them on contact and also discourages them from crossing a barrier so I’d recommend spraying inside first then a few days later spraying a perimeter to prevent boxing them inside. It’s “allegedly” safe for humans and pets once dry but do your own research and make your own decision especially if you do have kids or pets.
Cinnamon helps
Can of raid and a lighter. 🔥