Best method for killing ants. Any ideas?

Spring has arrived and so have our unwelcome guests.

So, how do we kill them all. I'm talking colonies here that dot the yard and have invaded the house. They are small black ones.

But we don't want to violate child labor laws.

those pesticide disks work very, very,well.

Ants hate cinnamon. When they come in, find their trail and place a cinnamon stick across it. The ants will not cross over cinnamon. The next day, place another stick further along on their trail closer to where they are coming in. A few well placed detour cinnamon sticks that eventually end outside with a final detour leading into the yard or something... They will stay away until next year, at least. If you prefer to kill them, then simply use the cinnamon sticks to detour them into vats of poison or something. I prefer just the detour- and cinnamon is safe for pets and babies.

:wtf: We always use Mint!

powdered cinnamon along the trail?

It is why I haven't posted much since joining DU. I post my fairly liberal way with cinnamon STICKS and some progressive has to pipe up with 'sprinkled powder'. Go ahead, try the powder. The sticks can be easily moved from the left to center to right of the trail. The powder would be just this new, messy way of dealing with something. But go ahead. I knew I shouldn't have posted. I knew someone would want to take issue with sticks and suggest powder....
:sarcasm:

:hi:

also take your leftovers away from your house. And drop them on the ground.

The cinnamon will make them want to avoid your house, leftover food trailing away from your house will lead them away.

But if nothing else works - pour gasoline on the ant hill.


Why did I say that? I LOVE ants!


Khash.

and don't worry too much about the yard. It is "natural" and works in a mechanical way, but still has some danger - don't breath it in etc. And if it gets wet you have to reaply. It works but is a bit messy.

I have used traps too, but they seem to work better on roaches than ants. (and I hate to use poisons)

oatmeal around the top of the ant nest and the workers will carry it to the queen.
She'll eat it and drink water, the oatmeal will expand and the queen will explode.
The colony will die and/or move away to another queen...
at least it worked for me and fire ants in the southwest!

They will move away. Non toxic and it works.

.....good old generic bleach or white vinegar. I like the bleach better though, it works faster and longer. In fact you can put some undiluted bleach in a spray bottle or a squeeze dish soap bottle and reapply when needed.

shine in a flashlight. Then you stick an oatmeal cookie in the hole of the nest. You do that for four nights. On the fifth night, you wait until pitch blackness. Then you go to the nest armed with your flashlight and a hammer. You shine in your flashlight and now you wait. One minute, two, three, four...then suddenly a little head pops out of the hole and hollers "WHERE'S MY COOKIE?"

WHACK!

That trick always works on baboons.

Mandrills, however, are WAY too smart to fall for that.

and you know where you stick the cookie?

Very handsome Mandrill, and I don't say that to just any monkey.

sacramento was built on an anthill, i swear! when it rains, the hordes come.

Ants will cross it, unless other ants make a "bridge" out of the dead ones.

should you be applying the borax in the yard or another area where things grow, it will render the soil useless for literally years!

Jenn

..spread it along their path and dump a bunch where they live. cheap,enviro friendly,and effective

Wait for the ants to dig into the honey then squish the lil' buggers to Kingdom Come. :evilgrin:

:nuke: :cry:

and when lucky enough to score it, Chinese ant chalk works well. I think it might be illegal because the man at the Asian market hides it under his counter and you need to ask for it, and he only understands you if asked quietly.

That seems uncalled for. A few thousand ants are not as bad as poisoning a whole yard. Unless they start building big mounds or something. I am not sure if the little red ant traps work, but that is what I have always used.

No ants, termites, grasshoppers, bunnies, bears, etc. will want to come within 5 miles of our yard. It's total war. They task me, and I will have them. No quarter asked, none given. I'm laying down enough poison to cause a new wave of Canadian flipper-babies to be unleashed upon an unsuspecting world.

the squirrels and the skunks too?

It's "total war". Sun Tzu will be my guide in wiping out the vermin. I will annihilate the little ant-women, ant-children, ant-aunts, and ant-uncles. The squirrels are either with me or against me! (I hope they're with me, though.)

The cardinals and purple martins and robins and blue jays will go.

:rofl:

The sugar will attract them. They will carry the grits back home for later. They will eat some of the dry grits on the way. Soon as it rains or they drink water, kerplow, their stomachs will pop open. No more ants. It does work. I never knew ants had stomachs before, but I guess they do. Hm.

Definitely fire. You have to burn the little buggers out. Then you have to dig fire trenches to keep them from advancing.

Well hey, it works for army ants.

:P

would put down used coffee grounds around the foundation of home to act as a barrier

we were "invaded" a few years back - so I started doing coffee grounds - it works

Set them out along known ant trails. The ants will drink their fill, return to the nest and kill all the other ants with their yeast infection.

First sprinkle snuff all over the mound....











the ants will take it into the colony and feed it to the queen....












when she comes out to spit, hit her with a hammer.

But we'll have to be thorough.:sarcasm:

you only move 'em around

I'm fine with that.

Thanks for all of the suggestions.

It's the only way to be sure.

Seriously, diatomaceous earth seems to control ants without killing them off entirely, and without poison.

ant baits?

<Begin Guilt Trip>
http://www.folkmusic.com/record/r_stand.htm#Hey_Little_Ant

Hey Little Ant
words and music by Phil & Hannah Hoose

This is the biggest little song I know.

Vocals: John & Catie Curtis

Hey Little Ant, down in that crack
Can you hear me? Can you talk back?
See my shoe? Can you see that?
Oh now it's gonna squish you flat.

(gasp)! Please oh please do not squish me
Spare my life and let me be
I'm on my way home with a crumb of pie
Please don't squish me, don't make me die.

Oh anyone knows that an ant can't feel,
You're so tiny you don't seem real.
I'm so big and you're so small
I don't think it'll hurt at all.

Yeah - well you are a giant and giants can't
Know how it feels to be an ant.
Come down close and you will see
That you are quite a lot like me.

Are you crazy? Me? Like you?
Why I've got a home and a family too.
You're just a speck that runs around.
No one'll care if my foot comes down.

Oh big friend you are so wrong
My nest mates need me because I am strong.
I dig our nest, feed baby ants too
I must not die beneath your shoe.

Yeah well my mother says that ants are rude.
They carry off our picnic food.
They steal our chips and our bread crumbs too.
Who cares if I kill a crook like you?

Hey I'm not a crook, kid, read my lips.
Sometimes ants need crumbs and chips.
Why, one of your chips feeds my whole town
You must not let your foot come down.

Yeah, but all my friends squish ants each day
Squishing ants is a game we play.
They're looking at us, they're listening too.
They all say - I should squish you!

Well I can see you're big and strong
Decide for yourself what's right and wrong.
But if you were me and I were you
What would you want me to do?

Should the ant get squished? Should the ant go free?
It's up to the kid, not up to me.
So we'll leave that kid with the raised up shoe
What do you think that kid should do?
<End Guilt Trip>
;)

and I would have to stomp around for a long time to get rid of them all.

I refuse to share my home with bugs and rodents. They can live free, just not here.

As a man who cries like a baby when killing insects (pathetic, eh?), ants ain't so friendly here. Fire ant bites hurt like hell and then develope into blisters that seep pus and sometimes leave scars....

A little mayhem might be justified. Hell, I never bit one of them!

Khash.

The "Flame Thrower" method worked great when I was a kid.

Down here I actually view infestation with black ants as a good sign, one that means the fire ant numbers have gone down. I'm hoping that a demonstration project a few miles away involving small aphid flys that prey on fire ants will reach over into my neighborhood.

Black ants are cool.

I'll ship you a colony or two.

Is it legal to ship ants across state lines?

They'd be fire ant-lunch in short order. I am, however, headed up north in June, so I'll get to see them, as well as grass you can actually sit in, and the other things I miss most (Drake's Cakes, decent pizza and bagels, hemlock/rhododendron thickets, places where history is something other than the 1950s, White Castle, democrats, shade, you get the point).

... they might come and spray-paint your house or slash your tires.

:hi:

At least people are more sympathetic to killing ants than mice.

Turning it on won't faze them.