GETTING RID OF ANTS!!!!

[Altica]

We have a huge problem here in Auckland, its ants. They are everywhere and into everything. This morning I found a line of them marching up the hallway and into the bathroom after an old bottle of cough syrup. So after throwing away the cough syrup and spraying some pyrethrum at them, I decided to hit the forums and see if anyone has any ideas on how to keep them away.

We already have a natural pyrethrum spay in the house on a timer, which is great for keeping keeping away flies and other bugs, but the ants seem to be resistant.

Any ideas?

[Shirley]

Try This thread

[PeterNZ]

Hi Altica,

please don't get this wrong, but I never understand why people want to get rid of Ants! Keeping them out of the house - yes! But getting rid of them as in "kill the bastards" - no! I have seen people getting panic attacks when they saw an Ant highway along their kitchen bench. "Iiih yuck! Ants!" They don't do anything bad in your kitchen. They don't carry diseases, they don't kill you, they don't bite you (as long as you don't disturb them). So what is the problem here?

If you want to keep Ants out of your house, make sure they don't find anything to eat and make their life in your kitchen miserable and boring! No jam jars on the bench, no cough sirup in the bathroom, wipe the bottles, so that no sugary stuff is sticking to them etc. Take a hand broom and swipe them off and they will leave with a disgusted expression on their face!

We have Ants from time to time. But only if there is something to eat for them. We kick them out and clean up the mess WE LEFT!

Ants are a very important part of our eco systems. They get rid of all sorts of things. Ants are Good! The worst thing you can do is to buy those baits in the hardware store. They carry the bait into their colony and you kill 100 thousands of ants only because you had 50 of them in your kitchen because someone left a sticky spoon with jam on the counter! What a waste!

Just to make it clear, I am talking about the normal ant. There are ants which are regarded as pest i.e. the Argentine Ant recently discovered in Nelson, NZ etc.

Cheers

Peter

[Clara]

Peppermint essential oil - put a line down where you don´t want them to cross (e.g. doorway), it works amazingly well though you will have to renew it every few days. Doesn´t kill them just deters them.

Clara x.

[Shirley]

Oooh I'm not scared of ants... and I don't mind the odd one or two in the house... but one house we lived in in Herefordshire was teeming with them... thousands of them... makes me itch just to think about it. One lot made a nest under my pc and when my other half moved it they were swarming everywhere, all up his legs etc... he reckoned they bit him. We eventually got rid of them.. or so we thought.. then one day heaps of the large and winged variety appeared out of the woodwork and were busy divebombing us... all indoors... and hundreds of them.

Ants... fine outside... not good inside.

[Chickpea]

When my daughter was about 2 she sat on an anthill in the garden and got ants in her pants literally. Poor little mite got bitten quite badly and was upset. We put a paste of bicarb and water on the bites and gave her a hug to calm her down, but we didn't take any action against the ants. We just pointed out where they were so the kids knew what to avoid. Later on that evening she said "Daddy, what do ants eat?" "Oh, all kinds of things, leaves mostly, other bugs, stuff like that." said Mr Pea. "My daughter thought about this and said "Not little girls, then?"

[Altica]

please don't get this wrong, but I never understand why people want to get rid of Ants! Keeping them out of the house - yes! But getting rid of them as in "kill the bastards" - no! I have seen people getting panic attacks when they saw an Ant highway along their kitchen bench. "Iiih yuck! Ants!" They don't do anything bad in your kitchen. They don't carry diseases, they don't kill you, they don't bite you (as long as you don't disturb them). So what is the problem here?

well, really, I do just want them out of the house. I dont particularly want to kill them, and I leave them alone if they're outside. But there have been numerous occasions when I have woken up with a trail of them going over the bed, as they're going after a dead moth in the corner, and that is when i 've been bitten a few times.

Over the last week we seem to have fixed the problem though. A work mate of mine from south africa suggested sprinkling around baby powder in the same way Clara suggests using peppermint oil, and that seems to keep them out.

[Thomzo]

Hi Altica,

please don't get this wrong, but I never understand why people want to get rid of Ants!
Peter

Hi
Oh where do I start? Well they do bite and quite painful those bites are as well. You don't need to be deliberatly nasty to them. Even pruning or weeding in the general area of their nest will do.

Secondly they eat your plants. Well they ate all the roots of the plants in my greenhouse anyway and everything died off.

Thirdly they undermine your patio - well they did mine. The slabs were all lose and I nearly broke my neck tripping over them. When I lifted one they had burrowed this huge nest into the cement and the sand that the patio was laid on.

OK so I guess I am selfish in not wanting them to eat me, my plants and my patio but that's just the way I am! Anyway the best way I have found of despatching the flying variety is to let the spiders rent space in your greenhouse. The flying ants hatch, fly up towards the roof and immediately become spider dinner - yum.

[titch7069]

we have safari ants that give a painful bite, white ants that eat all wood even if treated and many other kinds that bite and eat everything. i spray any i find with diluted citronella oil, they die, i'm happy, sorry but dudu's (insects) here are a menace and i get rid of any i see. i developed a tropical ulcer that has the possibility of turning cancerous after a safari ant bite, they are my enemies now!

[Jack]

Gidday

Well I know what it's like to have ants invading the house when we were up north. We have always used that old fashioned wives tale idea of the borax and sugar and it walays worked for us.

[Wombat]

we have safari ants that give a painful bite, white ants that eat all wood even if treated and many other kinds that bite and eat everything. i spray any i find with diluted citronella oil, they die, i'm happy, sorry but dudu's (insects) here are a menace and i get rid of any i see. i developed a tropical ulcer that has the possibility of turning cancerous after a safari ant bite, they are my enemies now!

Wow Titch, that's really bad! I can understand your aversion after that!

Nev

[cat chloe]

I have a technique that works great on regular small black ants. (I don't know about all of those exotic ones you folks mentioned above!) Anyway, what you do is spray them with a little glass cleaner and--IMPORTANT--leave their dead and dying carcasses stuck to the counter. Soon, their comrades will come and pick them up, and won't return for more carnage. Sometimes it take 2 or 3 tries, but I've had perfect success with this technique, and it doesn't poison the nest or the ant-eating critters.

[Cheezy]

A little off thread, but my earlier advice in the ants link that Shirlz posted definitely works with respect to ants farming aphids:
A spoonful of jam near the plant infested with aphids that they are milking, will change their behaviour. They see the jam as easy sugar and the aphids as redundent sugar factories and sources of protein/enamies and eat them.

I've tried it for several years now, and I remember Andy also trying it and it working.

Credit to Bob Flowerdew on GQT.

In a similar thought to ants coming into the house, they send in scouts for sweet things. If they find none they will not bother you. If they find one you get the whole army. So find out where they are coming in and going to remove the source of sweet, follow them back into the garden, and place something sweet as an alternative.
Then block up the access if possible.