Kitchen

[jaxs mom]

You need to find their home base and treat it. Sometimes they come in searching for water, if you live in a dry climate.

[chickenbutt]

Ugh, ants! We get these tiny ones (the husband calls them pissants) every spring/summer and it drives me crazy.

Anyway, I've tried about every home remedy out there and NONE of them worked. We get the exterminator guy to come once a year now and spray under and around the house. It's stuff that isn't toxic to the bird or me (asthma & auto-immune disease) so I don't have to worry about that.

Anyway, beyond that, he gave us this syringe full of this gel and said to just put a drop down and then wait. YIKES! I put this in my kitchen and the next morning there were more ants than I've ever seen. I called him and he said to just try and leave it alone. They will bring it to the nest and that will be that.

Well, he was right (of course) and that WAS that. I still have some of that and as soon as I see any I will put another drop of it somewhere in a corner and they will take care of themselves within a day or two.

Before that I got all kinds of the little bait things with stuff inside them that you can just buy anywhere and it never made a difference at all. I put out cinnamon and everything else I read about. None of that worked. But this gel in the syringe did it in spades.

ETA - I just went downstairs to find out the name of the stuff I have. It's DuPont Advion Ant Gel.

[beach-mom]

Thanks everyone for your advice! It is certainly not warm here - 9 degrees when I left in the morning and snow everywhere. They don't seem to be anywhere else other than around the kitchen sink. We have pets that have the run of the house so I have to be careful what I use. Our kitties have a drinking mug on the counter right beside the kitchen sink that is always filled with water for them. This practice started a long time ago when DD filled his favorite mug with ice water and one of the cats at the time decided to share. It's been passed down from generation to generation. I got rid of everything food related last night and sprayed down the counter. This morning they were back on both sides of the sink. There was no food anywhere! It's so frustrating. Ants are one of the things I'm squeamish about - UGH!

[chickenbutt]

That's the thing! You keep your kitchen clean and dry, and they STILL come in droves. I actually got them in my master bath one year. I NEVER bring any kind of food into my master bdrm/bath. It was crazy.

If you can get some of the gel in the syringe I mentioned - truly, it's the first thing I've tried that actually did work. My husband spent all kinds of money on those little trap/bait things you can get at the hardware store and never did they ever work. I tried everything natural I read about. But the ant gel - nothing like it! I guess it is extremely attractive and, as ants do, they bring it back to the nest. Within les than two days I didn't have another ant and, for the two years I've done this now (we only have ants in the spring/summer - so far, anyway) it was the same - no more ants until the next ant season.

For me, the worst thing is flies! GACK! Fortunately, still, we don't have any bugs at all in the winter but I cannot stand to have a fly in my house. Since I started the penny in the baggie of water thing - I've had TWO flies in my house in the last 4 years. One was just because the chuckleheads installing carpet one year left my front door open for a couple of hours.

The climate where I am is changing so much that one of my worst fears is that we will start having bugs/flies/ants, etc, all year long. I couldn't handle that. Also, I hope the fleas never come up here. We've never had fleas here and that's the ONLY reason we have a dog and have had cats over the years.

[Toppers]

We have had problems with those little black ants in our kitchen area. They were coming upstairs to us around our wall and kitchen cabinets. Luckily the ant bait traps work for us.

We would usually see them during the early part of Spring or Summer, and then that would be it. We just have the traps on hand, just in case we need them.

Editing to add that we have a cat, and we put the trap in an area where she can't get to it, but where the ants can still have access to it.

[ROMARY]

Powdered red pepper or cayenne. Works every time. Just a few months ago, there was a huge stream of ants on my window seal outside, so I sprinkled a line of red pepper along their path line, and they were gone in a couple of hours. They went back home, or somewhere else.

[brewhaha]

Spray orange oil around the exterior of your house.

[chickenbutt]

We must have some pretty sturdy, stubborn ants! I tried all these things and none of them worked. I had cayenne pepper all over the place for one year. The next year it was the cinnamon, and on and on.

Glad these remedies work for some. That explains why I keep seeing them in print, even though they didn't work for me.

[FunkyHulaGirl]

One of the best ant killers is....Splenda! Mix some with a few drops of water on pieces of aluminum foil, and put them in the areas where you've been seeing ants. It really works and they won't come back. Splenda is a molecule of carbon and hydrogen with attached chlorine atoms - its molecular structure is similar to DDT and was discovered accidentally when scientists were trying to develop a new insecticide.

[Harpa]

Last year was the 1st year there was nary an ant anywhere to be seen! We live in an older type home with trees around, so you know the little pests are going to schlep through, especially in the spring.

So what happened last year? I wish I knew, because I would love to repeat it this year!

FHG, thanks for the Splenda tip. I never use the stuff myself, but I will try it if I see them this year.