Super Ants / Resist All Insectides / Suggestions

I've had surprisingly good luck with cinamon, though I don't know if it works on all ants. Just sprinkle it around like you would ant granules. I don't know how it works, and I've never seen any bodies, but it does seem to work.

Rather than attacking ants with a contact insecticide, create a zone of residual insecticide such as Demon TC (or other permethrin based product) around every entrance ants can use, and locate nests, and poison them! You want to get the queens.

I had an infestation of garden ants and I was told that they search for sweet foods so your first control measure must be to ensure that you are not accidentally encouraging them - even a small spill of a soft drink would be a feast to a horde of ants.

Ants are social insects and live in a nest. There is a queen which lays all the eggs. In late spring these hatch into larvae ( the 'caterpillar stage). The queen rears them and, after 3 weeks, the larvae pupate become worker ants. It is these worker ants which go looking for food and look after the next generation.

You can carry out treatment against ants yourself but you have to be thorough.

Apply a residual insecticide[/u] for crawling insects. That is the description which you will see on the products package. You will be able to buy these at many DIY supermarkets and garden centers. Apply it to the entrance to the nest and wherever ants can enter your home.

Inside your house you should apply the insecticide behind the sink unit, skirting boards, around doors and window frames. Also apply it where any waste pipes or other services enter the building and make sure insecticide gets into any small cracks and crevices.

You are trying to create a band of insecticide which ants must cross to get into your home.

Most important[/u] is that to ensure you get rid of the problem you will need to find their nest. Follow any ant trails and look for small entrance holes in the ground surrounded by small piles of fine earth. Once you have found the nest follow the instructions that come with the pesticide about dealing with ants' nests.

If you can see the mound? Kill them instantly with boiling water.
There is no returning or surviving that .

That's it. Nuke Ant City. Get the queen.

If you use soft drinks, wash out the bottles and cans before putting them in the trash bin, and don't leave sweet stuff lying about. Ants can smell sugar from 100 yards away.

Okay, some good counsel, especially from contrex, with a good lesson on ant entomology, although it sounded very familiar to some commercials for Raid, that I've seen on TV.

Well, I understand the issue of finding the nest and keeping food sources at a minimum (and I particularly like the boiling water solution). Exclusive of the pet food problem, the good news is that we're leading a pretty clean life and minimizing food and pop cans that we just toss on the ground around our house (Food sources: None). The bad news is that our house abutts the woods and locating the nest (and the queen) is a little bit like locating a Snickers bar at a Weight Watchers convention.

I'm inclined toward the strategy of applying some agent around the perimeter, in order to cut they avenues of ingress (sort of like bombing the Ho Chi Minh trail, but hopefully more effective than that was . . .). Any suggestions on an agent to use. I guess I could try to the Amdro ant bait, but whatever happened to some of those really good chemical insecticides, like Malathion? I think those were phased-out for some environmental reasons, but any other suggestions.

Have you tried diatomaceous earth? Work it into the soil around your property.

I did a quick google on Ants and cinnamon. There seems to be lots of agreement. Anyway, it's cheap and smells better than the average insecticide.

Trying to kill the individuals that you find is useless, you need to spread bait which they will take back to the rest.

The Orkin man that comes to the apartments says to never spray ants with poison. He gave a reason (which I forget) why this causes them to return in greater numbers. He uses only baits.

I use the tried and proven method of the magnifying glass on a bright sunshiny day. it may only be one at a time but it's fun.

They sound like what the pesticide guy here calls "odiferous ants" -- little brown ones that have a strong scent when you crush one.

Problem with these guys is, they don't build mounds. they live in underground cities that have almost-unnoticeable entrances. There's a colony under the trailer park I live in. Almost everyone has parades of ants all summer...

One way to deal with them is baits. The worker ants collect it and carry it back to the queen and "inside workers."

Or you can ignore them. They don't eat much, and I've heard that, because they live underground where it's moist, their bodies secrete a kind of antibiotic that keeps their shells free of germs and fungus.

UNIVERSITY OF KENTUCKY - ANT CONTROL

the above website provides plenty of information on ant control .
make sure your house is WELL sealed against ants wanting to come in !
we spray diatom earth around the whole perimeter of our house twice a year - that keeps them outside .
we need about two containers for each application - about 500 linear feet .

i don't want to destroy their outdoors habitat because i believe the ordinary ants are probably beneficial - link see below .

BENEFICIAL ANTS

Some more good insights, and I even gave passing consideration to the magnifying glass idea - although for the magnitude of my problem, the magnifying glass would probably be the size that would need to be placed in low Earth orbit in order to be effective (although that sounds like a strangely familiar James Bond movie theme, some time back).

In the interim, I opted to go with the perimeter bait approach, although I still can't quite fathom why the spraying of pesticide around the house perimeter hasn't been effective. And just to set the record straight, I haven't been attempting to only target the ants that are visible and spray each one of them individually - as this would suggest some efficacy along the lines of the magnifying glass strategy (Long-term Effectiveness: Zero).

And this idea of somehow "sealing" my house, in order to limit the ingress of ants is also a losing proposition. Even though my house is relatively new, there are just too many small openings that the ants can avail themselves of to really make that an effective strategy. Sealing those little openings would be like trying to seal all the openings on the underside of a Buick LeSabre, and then floating it across Lake Erie to Canada. It's "no win".

find the nest, pour in gasoline and set them on fire. A thousand years from now when ants gather to worship they will refer to it as the day God destroyed the world by fire.

i tried the burning method some years ago using a can of motoroil - let it settle in - lighted some sheets of newspapers - it burned for about two hours underground - the following week the ants were back - IN THE SAME NEST !!! .

i now leave them alone in the lawn - just use the diatom earth around the perimeter of the house .
we still find the odd ant in the house , but no longer any invasion .
hbg

btw better NOT use any fire close to the house :wink:

Okay, I'm not sure about the Orkin man story about not spraying ants because they'll come back in greater numbers. That sounds almost as goofy as the old urban legend of if you cut your hair more - the faster it will grow. Well, both stories are pretty preposterous.

On a more serious note, after investing in some Amdro ant bait, that seems to have turned the trick finally. It took a couple of applications, but the bait, but the numbers of ants that are visible after a couple of weeks has been knocked back by probably close to 90 percent. Another couple of applications should probably knock them out altogether - just about in time for the first frost. Ugh.

and remember to do another application in the spring next year BEFORE they start multplying - you've got to keep them in check !
btw i think the ant/insect population is also influenced by weather conditions . it's been an unsually wet summer in eastern ontario and we have more ants and earwigs around than usual ; luckily , not many make it into the house .
i've covered the surface of the soil surrounding the house with diat. earth twice , plus some spot applications .
hbg

Maybe you have Pharaoh Ants.

Pharaoh

To what depth?