What is the best way to get rid of ants?
Here’s the answer according to BUGMAN:
Ants are ornery. They are very difficult to get rid of. (Don’t suppose that’s a good enough answer...) But we have some good ideas (so did you!) that can help control these common household pests.
It is always important to know a little about the animal you are trying to control. Ants will only go to places where they can get food, water, shelter or something else they need to survive. All you have to do to get rid of them is not have any of these things. Can’t really do that...
So, what do ants eat? Most of the ants that infest
people’s houses are omnivores (that means
they eat everything in sight!) Usually they are scavengers
(they eat whatever they find laying around), but they can
also be predators (eat living animals), or herbivores
(they eat plants). Also, they will forage far and wide to
get their food. Many times there can be an ant problem in
a house caused by a colony whose main nest is in the
neighbor’s yard! This presents a difficult pest
problem.
Many of you said you had to get rid of the queen and destroy the nest. Often, ants will make a series of satellite nests and have more than one queen. So if you locate a nest in your house, it is probably a remote nest from a huge colony in some dead tree nearby! If you kill that queen there are probably more. So as long as your house is an attractive spot they will try to exploit it. And they are very good at what they do!
You can’t get all potential ant food out of your house. Even if your house is Martha Stewart clean, there will be plenty for ants to eat. And spraying insecticides is not effective most times because, hey, spray all you want...they’ll make more! All you can really do is try to make your house not smell like food as much as possible. For some reason (and this is not an endorsement or anything negative about other similar products) Formula 409 seems to work very well in this regard. It is probably true that other cleaning agents also will do the job, but this is the only one tested in the official BUGMAN Labs (Mark’s apartment!) While this compound and other cleaning agents have some toxic qualities – bleach is a potent toxin – they are formulated to be cleaners not killers.
If the ants are nesting nearby there might be some around
for a while. This is not an instant cure. And you
don’t get the "satisfaction" (or mess) of
seeing a bunch of dead ants. You can reinforce the
cleaning strategy with a bait-type product.
Combat
makes small, plastic disks with poison food in them.
These will help your pest control program last for a long
time. It will be the most attractive smelling thing in
your house, if you keep up with the cleaning stuff, so
any new scouts will be sure to find it.
Of course, if you have a really ba problem, you may need professional help. If the ants are nesting in your house, you probably do want professional help. Send us an email if you want help in choosing good pest control companies.
A special thanks to Beth for reminding me to post this!