Ants in the kitchen
Ain’t it great when you come home from work and find a line of ants straggling across your kitchen? Uy vey.
I applied my two homemade remedies, learned years ago. #1: Ants cannot swim through dish soap (the kind you use for hand-washing dishes), so pouring a line of dish soap across their path will cut them off quite effectively. Best done at the point where they’re entering the house, so they can’t find a way around. And #2: squash all the ants that are already inside the house. Make sure to do #1 first.
This seemed to work okay, as I only saw four ants this morning, presumably ones that were hiding when I applied remedy #2 last night. We’ll see how things look tonight. I also probably ought to clean the kitchen so there’s less for them to find, but we all know how that goes.
Fortunately, they hadn’t found the carton of sugar yet (or we would’ve had ant gridlock), although I found three or four ants in the cupboard where we keep it. I relocated the sugar to a much-more-distant cupboard for the time being (i.e., either until it looks like they’re not coming back, or until I call Orkin).
April 17th, 2005 at 11:05 pm
Kitchen debugging
September 2nd, 2005 at 1:12 pm
I’ve been battling ants for weeks now. Last night I put out the Real Kill Ant Bait. Got them at Home Depot. At first the ants just swarmed all over these traps, and there seemed to be more ants then ever before. It took every inch of determination not to just pick up the Raid can an wipe them out. But I didn’t, I let them in to have their fill. They must have taken it home to the Queen, cuz I don’t see them here today! Mission accomplished!
May 8th, 2007 at 8:30 pm
Squishing them will bring in more ants. When ants die, they emit a "death smell" so others can carry the carcass back to the mound.
Use boric acid on mounds and ant trails and orange or peppermint oil outside the home to deter them from entering the house.
Some even say that bay leaves will deter roaches, ants, termites and some flying insects.
Also, go get some instant grits from the grocery store and put it directly on the mound, maybe a tablespoon or two, and when the queen eats it, it blows up inside of her and makes her explode, killing her and her brood. Keep this up and your any problems will go away.
Also, if you see any insects in the home, spray them with rubbing alcohol, 90%, and they will die on contact. Better than insecticide and kills on contact.
-From Fort Worth, Texas - Steven Eddy