I don't post a lot but try to keep up on the threads. Anyway I need a remedy for an ant problem.
We have little black ( pharoh, sugar, etc) ants invading around one of the bathrooms and in the kitchen. We have a slab on grade house, so I can't get under it, but I have sprayed around the outside drilled holes in the stem wall and injected my bug spray under there.
I have also used the little round disks that have food they are supposed to take back to the nest and share with their friends and a granular stuff sprinkled around the outside and in the bottom cabinets. Still no dice. These guys just keep coming.
My wife keeps a pretty clean kitchen so it isn't a cleanlyness issue. I dropped a speck pizza on the stove and you would have thought it was a full blow pinic!
My next thought is to pull the bottoms out of the cabinets and start spraying there. We have a fomica backsplash in the kitchen and you can see them coming up through a little bitty gap around the window trim above the sink. I have sprayed down it too.
My next thought is to try to find something they like better than the store bought ant food. I know they like pizza and spinach. I spilled a little piece of spinach at lunch on the counter and by the time we finished lunch they had surrounded it!
If it is that bad, you might want to get a professional exterminator to come out. They have access to chemicals that us mere mortals aren't allowed to use. I'm all for organic, natural methods and avoid using anything nasty if I can help it, but when it comes to a war with insect-type little beasties I call in the big guns.
<font color="purple"> you might want to get a professional exterminator to come out. They have access to chemicals that us mere mortals aren't allowed to use </font color>
I just got introduced to Arizona's "big-headed ants" (that's really their name). None in the house yet, but they been making some huge mounds/colonies out around the yard.
I tried baits like Amdro and a home-made concoction of honey, peanut butter, and boric acid. The ants weren't too interested in that stuff, and I think it was really the quail and/or kangaroo rats that ate it each night.
Sevin killed some of the ants, but the rest just did damage control, piling up the dead outside the mound [img]/forums/images/icons/tongue.gif[/img]
Finally, online, I found a solution called cypermethrin, which may be one of those chemicals that us "mere mortals" cannot easily obtain (not found in hardware stores or Home Depot). This stuff is not cheap ($60 for 16 oz of concentrate, which makes 32 gallons of solution). Used to drench mounds, it makes quick work of a colony. I'm not sure how effective it would be in an inside application; probably better to track them back to their mound/colony and treat there, but it does kill them effectively.
In the last month, I've used about half (8 oz) of the concentrate and obliterated over a dozen good sized colonies.
I've had good luck with the borax and karo syrup stuff, when I can get the ants to eat it. I've also gone so far as to bait them and spray them. Drop that chunk of pizza, wait an hour until there's hundreds of them on it and spray with raid. Wipe the mess up and re-bait. It sometimes takes several applications and does not eliminate the whole nest, but it can take it down enough that the ants are no longer a problem. (Man, way too much spare time. [img]/forums/images/icons/blush.gif[/img] )
I got rid of carpenter ants in 2 houses I lived in. Used powdered borax mixed with powdered sugar. Had one mix dry and one mixed with a little water. Most ants preferred the wet one but some went after the dry one. Within a few days the ants bit the dust.
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