Monday, July 16, 2018

Way to get rid of sugar/carpenter ants fast

The most common ant baits used to get rid of sugar ants are called sweet baits, and the most common ingredient found in sweet ant baits is boric acid, or Borax. Most household ants (pharaoh ants, pavement ants, and little black ants included) are prone to the poison known as Borax. Borax is a mineral mined in the deserts of California, refined and dissolved into all manners of ant bait systems.


It is generally non-toxic to humans, though I wouldn’t recommend inhaling or ingesting large amounts of it. It is a slow-acting poison, which means that when the ants eat the bait (usually corn syrup), the poison doesn’t kill the ants right away. The ants take some of the sweet bait back to the colony with them and dispense the poison meal to other ants. This is how colonies of ants are exterminated, and sugar ants are the easiest ants to kill because they’re small, voracious scavengers. If you want to get rid of sugar ants or kill a sugar ant colony quickly, I prefer Terro brand sugar ant baits.


Natural Sugar Ant Control
Distilled White Vinegar
Use this to clean instead of bleach is a good way to naturally control sugar ant invasions. Acetic acid, the acid in vinegar that makes it smell so strong, not only naturally deodorizes (or odorizes, as the case may be), but is one of nature’s most powerful cleaning agents. We recommend using vinegar instead of bleach on How to Clean Things all the time, and nothing can be more repulsive to sugar ants than a little white vinegar. Make sure you use White Vinegar, and not apple cider vinegar or something like that. The less sugar the better.


Whole Cloves
These are apparently a good way to repel invading sugar ants. Whole cloves have been used to help prevent infestations of all sorts of insects. I imagine it is the compounds that produce the strong smell in cloves that many pests do not like, but then, I’m not a biologist like Eric, so I wouldn’t know. Suffice to say that if you leave some whole cloves laying around the house, especially along baseboards and under counters, you will probably have less sugar ants scurrying about–and perhaps a better smelling home, if you like cloves that is.


Bay Leaves
These leaves are another one of those natural home remedies to control sugar ants that I haven’t tried yet, but a few of the chefs I’ve worked with in camp kitchens say that Bay Leaves do in fact keep ants away. Usually they will put them under countertops where food is prepared and near entrances where ants are likely to come in.


1 comment:

  1. But, i want to ask, i read here, that i can get rid of carpenter ants with traps. Do you have a full list with a good traps which can trap ants? Or better to use poison as well?

    ReplyDelete