driving me insane! i can't get rid of them. they're in both bathrooms, the kitchen, and apparently my teen's room as well (no big surprise there). they've been in the bathrooms for awhile now, and they just laugh at the ant baits (i saw one crawling all over one with no ill effect whatsoever), but last night they invaded the kitchen. i cleaned off the sink, stove&counter with bleach and had my daughter do the dishes (her one chore) but this morning they were everywhere. all day i've been spraying bleach wherever i see them, and i also took the microwave off the counter and cleaned there too. everytime i walk thru the kitchen i still see a couple crawling around. i've tried everything short of boric acid - i'm afraid of using that with little ones around. what else can i use to get rid of them? i'm gonna lose my mind.
* Hey, guess what? Glass cleaner (with ammonia) stops em dead :) I also found some Terro liquid poison stuff, so I'll put that down tomorrow after I clean under the sinks. BTW, has anyone ever heard of ants coming up thru the pipes?
my dad swears by a can of tuna (drained) filled with ant spray does the job every time. I have not ever tried it but my dad does this every time!
Take it from someone who went through this for years before I wised up and bought Terro Liquid Ant Baits. I tried all the natural solutions and killing myself trying to clean. NOTHING helped but the Terro baits. Buy them, buy them now! You will not regret it!!
All ant baits are not created equal. When I had ants, I went to Home Depot and bought 6 different brands of ant baits, put them all under the sink where the ants were coming in, and waited. The ants obviously preferred one brand over all the others so I put a few more of them out. Ants gone shortly after.
http://www.livingwithbugs.com/ant_bait.html this site may help we have had our fair share of ants and the other day when i senn a couple a got the boric acid out and went on a ant be gone spree. I have a rolling 6 month old and a 2 1/2 year old, while they nap i put it under the base boards and tiny corners. we use to mix it with sugar water soaked a cotton gauze pad and put it in a plastic cup where they cant reach (counter corner) they take it back to the colony and rid the source. takes about a week to rid a whole mess of them.
It depends on what kind of ants they are. the ants I had were attracted to water I keep my sinks etc DRY and cleaned where they have walked and left their scent for other ants. and they were gone in few days
I have used the white bait traps with gret success. BUT, you have to find out where they are coming from. We used to get the big ones and in the bathroom as well. Well, one year the flange in the toilet broke and we ended up having to replace floor boards first. When we ripped up the floor, we found an ant hill. Horrible little buggers ran everywhere. I went around spraying bathroom cleaner--scrubbing bubbles. That is how we killed the ant hill. I never had the big ones again. But we do get the little ones every year, not looking forward to it. If you have a basement, try to use a flashlight to see if they are under there. it can be the slightest crack to get through, even where the toilet meets the floor.
We have little black ants coming in every spring/summer. I use ant traps which have worked in the past but don't seem to be working very well this spring. I read recently on a website put baking soda or talcum powder at the point where they are coming in and wiping down your counters and the trail they follow with a mixture of vinegar and water. Apparently ants don't like the smell of vinegar.
I've wiped down my kitchen counters, the path they follow and around my door where they are coming in. I'm not seeing very many coming in anymore. I think I will need to repeat the vinegar treatment each week, but that's not really a big deal and it's a safe treatment to use around my kids and dog.
Yes, they come up thru my pipes. they also come thru my vents (they are in my floor as well) If you can find where they are coming from, you can put borax (find in laundry isle) around the area. I used it when my daughter was little to keep the ants outta the cat food.
here is the thing most people dont know about bait. It atracts ants. you will get more ants with the bait and then get less because they eat it and carry it to the colony and then the whole colony dies, but they treat it as a food source and your problem will get worse for about a week. We had a really bad ant problem two years ago. I was sucking them up with a vaccum every couple hours. finally I did some research, and you know what? ants really hate citrus!. I took some orange glow cleaner and sprayed it around where they were coming in and no more ants!
First you need to find out where they are coming in. We use baby power to deter them from coming in. It works wonders because it gets on their antennae and they can't communicate so they avoid it at all costs.
Also caulk any and all little holes or cracks in the house that they are coming in. They usually follow pipes or cable wires to get into a house.
Yeah... those bait traps don't work.
