How do I get rid of ANTS without calling exterminator? Best way to treat outside area around apt.?

Question

I have ants and they are driving me crazy Is there something like salt or lime I can sprinkle at base of apt outside to keep them form coming inside?

Answer 1

Line the areas of the house w/ Combat Gel! They'll take the poison back to the others and they'll be gone in no time.

Answer 2

Summer is here, which means that it’s time to deal with all sorts of creepy, crawly critters. With four kids in the house, we’ve had to deal with our fair share of ants in the past — though it’s been less of an issue as the kids have gotten a bit older and a bit less messy. While there are a lot of commercial solutions out there, such as Terro Ant Baits, I wanted to share a quick, cheap, and easy tip for do-it-yourself ant control.

Outdoor Ant Control

Supplies: 1 to 2 gallons water

Stove or barbecue grill

Instructions: Heat water to 160 to 170 degrees. Quietly sneak up to the mounds of ants and pour the boiling water down the hole.

Note: I normally try to do this between 11am and 2 pm.

Indoor Ant Control

Supplies: 1 tbsp. boric acid

  1 tbsp. mint jelly or peanut butter

  1 cracker

  Small cardboard box

Instructions: Mix the boric acid and mint jelly; spread mixture on a cracker. Punch pinholes in a cardboard box; place cracker inside. Place box in an area where ants cause problems, but away from children and pets.

Note: The mint jelly or peanut butter lures the ants in and the boric acid kills them.

Indoor and Outdoor Ant Control

Supplies: Diatomaceous earth

Instructions: Dust food-grade diatomaceous earth along the ant’s pathways.

Note: The white powder will cut through their exoskeleton and they will dehydrate and die.

Indoor and Outdoor Ant Control Supplies:

1 1/2 cup Cream of Wheat

Instructions: Place a dish of Cream of Wheat where the ants can access it.

Note: After they eat it, the cereal expands and the ants will explode.

• This is an answer for Ana who has problems with ants in her kitchen. I have found sprinkling Comet or Ajax powder around the area the ants are invading works wonders. I also take it outside and find where the ants are coming up into the house and sprinkle it there. This is great in the kitchen because it is not poisonous like bug sprays. Good luck! - LR

• Red chili powder !! I've been using it to repel ants for years. Make a paste using a little water, find where the little black pests are coming in and going out and paste the area. you can sprinkle the powder too, but I find adding water makes it more potent. The ants hate the stuff. Brooke and Mary B.

First, pick up some boric acid powder (available at most drug stores) and mix a small amount of it 50:50 with table sugar. There’s nothing particularly scientific about this ratio, so it’s fine to just eyeball it. Next, put some of this mix into a small container such as the the cap from a milk jug or the lid from a 2 liter bottle. Finally, drizzle some water into it to make a slurry (i.e., a thick suspension). That’s it — you’re now ready to kill some ants.

Once your concoction is ready, simply set the mix in the path of the oncoming ants (they usually form a foraging trail) and then wait. At this point it’s important to be patient and not kill any of the ants yourself. The reason for this is that you want them to take your tasty treat back to the nest with them. Boric acid is toxic to ants, but it doesn’t work immediately. As such, you need to let them forage and then take it back home to share with their nestmates — this will ultimately wipe out the entire colony.

A few notes:

It might take a bit for the ants to get interested. I’ve noticed in that past that they really get going after dark, so if they don’t take interest right away, there’s still hope. Within a day or two your problem will be gone.

As I noted above, it’s important to resist the temptation to squash them once they get interested in your tasty treat. Let them have their fill and then take it back to the nest to feed it to the queen and her young’uns.

A word of caution… While boric acid is relatively low in toxicity when it comes to humans — in fact, it’s traditionally been used as an eye wash in a low concentration solution — you still shouldn’t ingest it. As such, you should keep children and/or pets away from it.

There are different kinds of ants. Some prefer sweets, whereas others prefer grease and fats. While I’ve never tried this myself, I’ve heard that mixing boric acid with peanut butter is an effective treatment for grease-eating ants. So… If sugar doesn’t work, give peanut butter a try.

Finally, it’s worth noting that the most effective way to combat the ant problem is to avoid it in the first place. Simply cleaning up after messy kids, wiping up food spills, sweeping up crumbs, etc. will go a long way toward keeping the ants away.

Answer 3

You can buy special sprays with which you can kill them or even repel them. There are also special sticky pads you can buy on which if they walk they get stuck to and die. Or you can put some poison on leaves and scatter them around hoping they eat them and die.

Or you can lay a trap. Make a high concentarted solution of sugar water and pour some on the floor near where you think they are. Put sticky pads near by and lay in wait with the spray!

Good Luck!

Answer 4

You really need to find the nest(s) and flood  with boiling water.

Answer 5

Use a mix of cinnamon and sugar. The ants will pick up the sugar, along with the cinnamon, and take it back to their queen. Ants can’t digest cinnamon and once the queen dies from not being able to digest the cinnamon the colony will die without her.

Answer 6

first get a lot of baking soda and cover the ant hole with it, poke holes along the hole (hehe) so that the baking soda gets in the holes.

then get a lot of high concentration vinegar (household cooking vinegar works fine too) and pour it on the hole that has the baking soda.

use a lot of the 2 ingredients!

the reason this works is because the vinegar burns the ants and the baking soda "propels" it down into the ants "base".