OT: HELP! Major ant infestation in the house!

Folks, I am in need of some pest control advice in a hurry. My latest job keeps me on the road most of the week and on getting home from my last trip I noticed a few black ants roaming around the kitchen. Obviously, I scooped those up, disposed of them, and chaulked it up to a small piece of table scrap that ended up on the floor. Not even a day goes and when I woke up this morning there was a massive stream of ants invading the kitchen! It's been in the upper 90's and dry here and after speaking with 2 of my neighbors they said they had been experiencing the same thing. My question is how the heck to I exterminate them and prevent them from coming back in? It seems like I'll kill a few hundred and an hour later or so there will be another hundred more.

I plan on disassembling most of the kitchen after work today (i.e. removing the refrigerator, stove, dishwasher, etc.) and mopping the heck out of everything. I'll caulk any holes they may be roaming through. Luckily, they haven't made it into any upper cabinets, but I guess there wouldn't be much there since it's mostly cans and other sealed containers.

Any suggestions for do-it-yourself extermination? Is there any solution out there that is pet friendly?

Thanks in advance from a recently new and helpless homeowner.

I was just reading yesterday about this and I can't find the link. The trick was to use Borax mixed with sugar or Peanut butter. Place some mixture on a milk jug cap and put it behind appliances.

I had this happen about 12 years ago.

I was working at my desc in the basement and noticed a few black carpenter ants. Investigation revealed a major nest. You must find the nest!

In a panic I grabbed my Shop Vac and started sucking them up.

After about an hour I couldn't find any more.

The guy from Orkin came out and said he couldn't find any but told me, "They will be back!"

Well, I haven't seen another carpenter ant in 12 year!

It seemed a very environmentally sound extermination technique.

Sandman is right, you absolutely need to find the nest so you know where they are coming from. Particularly, you need to know whether they are coming from inside or from outside the house. Carpenter ants are nasty little beasties and you need to get them out of our house. I found a nest in our house once under a door sill. I sprayed them, vacuumed them and chiseled out as much of their nest as I could reach and then packed the resulting hole with water putty mixed liberally with Sevin dust. They never came back.

Outside, we had a nest in a tree. Here you have more options since you needn't worry about spraying poisons in your house. An environmentally friendly method however, is to go to your local swimming pool store and buy a bag of Diatomaceous earth. This is a pool filter medium, but the particles are so tiny that when ants track through it, it gets caught in their exoskeleton and gives them arthritis, eventually immobilizing them entirely. For humans and pets, this stuff is entirely inert and harmless (although I wouldn't want to inhale it). Just put a strip of it around the tree deep enough so they have to wade through it when traveling in and out.

Sevin dust is good stuff, and many of the spray cans are good. We would often spray ant repellant/killer stuff liberally around the entrances to our house, especially at the sliding door to our deck.

Put a little red or yellow paint on the backs of a couple ants and watch to see where they go. It may take time, but you really do need to know where the nest is. Ants don't roam too far from home so if they are in the house, you need to find them.

You could always scoop them into a box, and send them off to Dr. Zooch. I hear he is looking for more test pilots...

I've had a few ant problems/nests. I've cleaned them out, but now I have an exterminator come out every few months. It's worth the cost. The repairs to my house were much more. No problems now.

If you are still in Jacksonville, go to Alternative Pest Control at 6125 Beach Blvd just east of University. Talk to Kim and scratch Rusty, the big red Dobermin on the head. She will sell you a product called Demon. It is sold in a 4-pack for around $20. It comes in little plastic pouches that are dropped into a water sprayer. Once the packet disolves, spray a fine mist where you've seen the ants, inside and out in the late afternoon on a day it doesn't rain. As the water evaporates it will leave a very fine powder behind that the ants will take back to their nests and they will die. It's very effective. There is also a small spray can of a product called "Tri-Die." It's a bit smelly and dries almost instantly as a powder. This is a contact poison that is good to spray where you suspect the nest to be. If it is the nest, you will know it. Look for places that might or could have water coming in; that's what brought them in to your house. Carpender ants like oak trees and warm, moist places. Kim tought me all that. Their number is 904-725-8131 or 1-800-281-1847.

If you are not in Jacksonville, find a place that in your area that carries professional pest control products.

Can you tell if you have "fire" ants, or some other kind?

When we get fire ants inside the house it is always a joy. I use Amdro because the ants do most of the work---they pick it up and carry it home, down into the center of their nest, where the poison does its trick. Takes about a day to be effective but it works well.

I apply Amdro inside the house where I see ants, and outside the foundation pretty much everywhere. After a few days (when the Amdro has had a chance to work) I follow up with spray or broadcast stuff on the lawn, extending maybe 30 or 40 feet from the house in all directions. I can't afford to do the whole yard (two acres) and it wouldn't do much good anyway unless all the neighbors (for a mile in every direction) did the same treatment at the same time. Fire ants send out "scouts" to establish new colonies several times a year, and they can fly for something like 1/2 to 1 mile....

Are you currently experiencing a drought? Sometimes in prolonged dry weather the surface soil will start to shrink and crack, creating easy paths deep in the ground (where it's still cool and relatively moist) that are ideal for ants and other bugs. You can combat this by working additional topsoil/sand mix into the soil cracks, and by watering deeply. Top off with yard pest treatments.

I've been having some carpenter ant troubles...I have a few helpful DIY extermination links at home I can post later tonite.

You first must discern if they're 'regular' ants or carpenter ants, as garden variety ant-killing chemicals don't work well on carpenters, you usually use the same things you use for termites.

Carpenter ants are bigger than your average ant, and they're VERY fast & hard to kill...you gotta squish them all the way. You may see some with wings, too

I haven't yet seen 'the march', but apparantly carpenters universally leave their nest for their target area (i.e., your/my kitchen) right at sundown. That's s'posedly when you need to be outside looking for this clue...then you nail the nest to kill the queen (crucial).

I spotted a few large, in-ground ant colonies a few weeks ago (not little hills, it was about a foot across, and not that elevated) when I was doing a perimeter/foundation Malathion spray, and I soaked 'em good. That seems to have stopped, or at least curatailed them.

Again, I found some good links on how to diagnose the problem, find & kill them, but they're on my home computer.

Amdro works awesome on the larger ants. It can be found at most major hardware stores. They'll take it back to the nest. Finding the nest is the best way to go about it though.

If you find the main "nest" outside. like an anthill, the absolute cheapest and most environmentally safe ant killer is a large pot of boiling water!

Much more effective than you might think.

eugenefl said:

Folks, I am in need of some pest control advice in a hurry. My latest job keeps me on the road most of the week and on getting home from my last trip I noticed a few black ants roaming around the kitchen.

Click to expand...

Bear with me on this.

Loooongg time ago I came back from out of town to find ants in the kitchen. Three streams of them, coming from two different places. It was late and I didn't want to go out and get ant killer, much less use the stuff before I went to bed.

The only thing I had around the house was Dow Bathroom Cleaner (these days its from Johnson & Johnson and called Scrubbing Bubbles). I figured it should have at least a few ant-noxious chemicals in it, and if nothing else, the ants would be confused navigating the bubbles. So I just sprayed each of the streams of ants, which definitely stopped most, and slowed down the rest.

Went to bed. Woke up the next morning to find most of the evidence of ants ever having been there, gone!

a couple of weeks later, I found another stream in a different place, sprayed that one, and hung around the rest of the day (had some programming to do on my TRS-80 color computer, to give an idea of how long ago) to see what happened.

Apparently, the ones that survived the original onslaught of the bubbles went back, told their buddies, who waited for the bubbles to dry, then went out and recovered the bodies. Weird!

They didn't come back after that.

I have no idea if there've been any changes from the old Dow Bathroom Cleaner to Scrubbing Bubbles (use the aerosol version, not the newer squeeze-pump version), but you might give it a try.

I've had the same problem this year, I suspect the ants are looking for water as well as food. During the recent heat wave our home was invaded by small black ants. In the past I've set bait traps on the window sills (where the ants were entering...just set them anywhere they seem to be entering or their path of travel). The bait works but takes a little time. This year I was less patient. I purchased some Ortho Home Defense Max (bifenthrin) in both granular and liquid form.
I applied the granular in a 2 - 3 foot wide swath around the perimeter of the house, spreading heavier in the areas where I know ants to be nesting. Inside I applied the liquid along the baseboards of exterior walls. Outside, I also applied the liquid along the edges of windows and along door sills, and to the exposed concrete of the foundation (just for good measure). It did the trick. I did this a week ago and have only observed one (apparently ill) ant since. Bifenthrin is a fairly safe pesticide (for mammals) but it is deadly to insects (and to fish, so be careful where you apply if there are lakes or streams near your home).
Craig

[ On a related note, years ago (when I was still a young child) my parents and I noticed a group of ants walking across the floor in the living room. Upon investigation they were attempting to carry off a rubber band! We never did figure out what they wanted to do with it. ]

A couple non-intrusive methods I've heard are to make a chalk outline around your patio or doors on the concrete. You know, the big sticks of children's sidewalk chalk. The other is to mix corn meal with cayanne (sp?) pepper as bait. Apparently, ants do not deal well with indigestion...lol

Deandome said:

I've been having some carpenter ant troubles...I have a few helpful DIY extermination links at home I can post later tonite.

You first must discern if they're 'regular' ants or carpenter ants, as garden variety ant-killing chemicals don't work well on carpenters, you usually use the same things you use for termites.

Carpenter ants are bigger than your average ant, and they're VERY fast & hard to kill...you gotta squish them all the way. You may see some with wings, too

I haven't yet seen 'the march', but apparantly carpenters universally leave their nest for their target area (i.e., your/my kitchen) right at sundown. That's s'posedly when you need to be outside looking for this clue...then you nail the nest to kill the queen (crucial).

I spotted a few large, in-ground ant colonies a few weeks ago (not little hills, it was about a foot across, and not that elevated) when I was doing a perimeter/foundation Malathion spray, and I soaked 'em good. That seems to have stopped, or at least curatailed them.

Again, I found some good links on how to diagnose the problem, find & kill them, but they're on my home computer.

Click to expand...

I want to say these are carpenter ants. They are quick and don't die easily when squished with a paper towel. Their buddies seem to come back and collect the dead too. I'm going to wait 'til the sun dips down a bit and then go investigating to see where their hideout is.

sandman said:

If you find the main "nest" outside. like an anthill, the absolute cheapest and most environmentally safe ant killer is a large pot of boiling water!

Much more effective than you might think.

Click to expand...

At this point I'd pour a gallon of gas over the area and light it up. I just want them OUT! (Wait, gas is too expensive for that. Nevermind.)

powderburner said:

Can you tell if you have "fire" ants, or some other kind?

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The are definitely not fire ants. They are black and haven't stung me yet despite having them crawl on my hand.

powderburner said:

Are you currently experiencing a drought? Sometimes in prolonged dry weather the surface soil will start to shrink and crack, creating easy paths deep in the ground (where it's still cool and relatively moist) that are ideal for ants and other bugs. You can combat this by working additional topsoil/sand mix into the soil cracks, and by watering deeply. Top off with yard pest treatments.

Click to expand...

Yep. It hasn't rained in over a week. All the lawns are turning brown and other neighbors have already experienced ant invasions as well. I might run the sprinkler in the backyard and soak the area around the back of the house. At least it'll water the lawn and maybe discourage the little buggers from marching into my house.

-

I have great comfort going through life knowing that there is an abundance of experienced individuals on this forum for almost any issue. I can't thank everyone enough for their advice and selfless efforts to help me out. I've got a war to wage. Hopefully within the next few days they'll be gone. We'll see.

Hilltopper said:

...fire ants are about an 1/8th inch long normal size....

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Ours are more like 1/4 inch




















Everything's bigger in Texas

Speaking of Texas ants, has anyone seen these guys yet?

https://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article3941545.ece

Those are not ants,
they are Replicators....

Here are the carpenter ant links. Note that you can easily/legally buy the 'good stuff'...the stuff that exterminators use! It's not stronger/more dangerous, as far as I can tell..but it is better (i.e. carpenter ants can detect & avoid some powder barriers, but there are things that they cant sense).

I think it's kinda like contact lenses (getting a scrip & then comparitve shopping for price vs. having to buy them from your optomitrist) & many veterinary suppliments; there's not really any danger in consumers buying/using the products as much as the pros wanna keep their monopoly (I mean no more danger than other, hardware-store variety pesticides, they're certainly not harmless & you need to research the product for pet compatibility & stuff).

Diagnose & general advice: https://www.idph.state.il.us/envhealth/pccarpenterants.htm

Specific product/technique tips. You can find better prices if you google the product you're interested in..this is just the best "DIY Pest Control site I found (maybe 'cuz that's the name of the site!):

https://www.doyourownpestcontrol.com/carp.htm

Not as exotic as some suggestions, but I use Raid Ant Baits placed in the path the ants are taking, then spray the outside perimeter of the house with Ortho® Home Defense MAX. Usually gone in a day.

We just found out little black ants have taken up residence in our popup camper.