Ant baits

[ImaginaryDay2]

Okay, I want these little pests gone!
I bought some ant baits at Wal-mart (their off-brand) and set one up by a corner of my room where ants are coming and going. Supposedly they carry the bait back to the colony, and they start to die off. All I've seen so far are ants going crazy for the bait, but they haven's slowed down one bit. it's been about a week since I put out the bait. Any ideas? Is there something that will work faster/better?
On the 'plus' side, the ants haven't been going anywhere in my room except to the bait!

 

[Lamb]

I just buy an unscented ant spray and spray it by the door openings and none come in until it gets mopped away and then I have to respray.

 

[MoreCoffee]

Okay, I want these little pests gone!
I bought some ant baits at Wal-mart (their off-brand) and set one up by a corner of my room where ants are coming and going. Supposedly they carry the bait back to the colony, and they start to die off. All I've seen so far are ants going crazy for the bait, but they haven's slowed down one bit. it's been about a week since I put out the bait. Any ideas? Is there something that will work faster/better?
On the 'plus' side, the ants haven't been going anywhere in my room except to the bait!

Take some dish washing liquid - just a little - add it to water in a spray bottle and spray the ants with it. They will die (I think they suffocate) and do it whenever you see them. After a couple of rounds of such treatment they give up and don't come back for a long time - usually a year or so.

 

[hotrhymez]

We use ant poison..

 

[ImaginaryDay2]

I may try these. Thanks. They just like the (so-called) poison too much

 

[Lamb]

I may try these. Thanks. They just like the (so-called) poison too much

That's how it is with fly traps too...it attracts them. But with fly traps they don't come out

 

[Stravinsk]

Okay, I want these little pests gone!
I bought some ant baits at Wal-mart (their off-brand) and set one up by a corner of my room where ants are coming and going. Supposedly they carry the bait back to the colony, and they start to die off. All I've seen so far are ants going crazy for the bait, but they haven's slowed down one bit. it's been about a week since I put out the bait. Any ideas? Is there something that will work faster/better?
On the 'plus' side, the ants haven't been going anywhere in my room except to the bait!

It seems to me the best solution would be to (if possible) present a Trojan horse scenario where the worker ants bring back a poison that is eventually consumed by the Queen - thus eliminating the local source of the ants. I'm not sure how that can be effectively achieved and with what substances, though.

The following may not be the *best* solution but I do like to present it because it does kill ants, and it shows something else.

Go to the grocery store and pick up Nutrasweet or Equal. This is additive 951, aka Aspartame. If you sprinkle this around as bait - you'll notice that it is not consumed or touched by the ants, like regular sugar is. This should tell you something simple - the ants do not regard it as food. They won't eat it.

So here's what you do to get them to consume it anyway. Take some regular sugar (white/brown/raw) - and make sugar syrup from it (add water, boil to mix and keep boiling until mixture is syrup). Once you have obtained sugar syrup - add in a large amount of Aspartame and mix well.

The ants will now consume the Aspartame as it's mixed with real sugar in a syrup form. And they will die - however - it will take a few days for this to happen. I tried this myself and can vouch that it works. That being said - I didn't measure the amount of Aspartame to sugar syrup in the initial or following experiments so larger amounts may or may not have made more of a difference in terms of death rate and time for the ants to die.

One of the reasons I did this was to debunk some stupid youtube videos that showed that Aspartame was NOT "ant poison" - because the people doing the debunking simply set it out as bait and the ants didn't touch it.

 

[IACOBVS]

Okay, I want these little pests gone!
I bought some ant baits at Wal-mart (their off-brand) and set one up by a corner of my room where ants are coming and going. Supposedly they carry the bait back to the colony, and they start to die off. All I've seen so far are ants going crazy for the bait, but they haven's slowed down one bit. it's been about a week since I put out the bait. Any ideas? Is there something that will work faster/better?
On the 'plus' side, the ants haven't been going anywhere in my room except to the bait!

It takes awhile. They take the poison to their home, and then everyone has to ingest it ... and there are babies hatching ... do you want to kill babies? But those need to be fed the poison, too. And the queen. Do you want to be accused of regicide? God did supposedly say on the sixth day that ants were good, supposedly 6,000 years ago ... to no one, so I don't know how we know that he said it. Anyway, you need to put out more of those ant poison things if they like them so much. Keep putting them out until no more ants come to raid them. That's when you will have had success in murdering a colony of one of nature's most wonderful and successful fruits of evolution.

 

[tango]

I've tried various forms of ant poison and typically they do draw more ants, at least for a time.

What I usually do these days is use the ants internal mechanisms against them. Since they navigate with pheromones I look to cause them a huge amount of distress, so they dump lots of warning signals to tell other ants not to follow where they were. This takes one of two forms, either I get down on hands and knees with the vacuum cleaner and advance the nozzle until I can see them start to hunker down and resist the suction and hold them there for a few seconds before sucking them up or, if they aren't coming in any great number, I'll use a scrunched up square of toilet paper to squash them but not enough to kill them, then leave them for a few seconds before putting them out of their misery.

I haven't had chance to test either method on the big black ants you get in the US but both methods worked pretty well against the smaller ants we get in the UK.

 

[MoreCoffee]

I've tried various forms of ant poison and typically they do draw more ants, at least for a time.

What I usually do these days is use the ants internal mechanisms against them. Since they navigate with pheromones I look to cause them a huge amount of distress, so they dump lots of warning signals to tell other ants not to follow where they were. This takes one of two forms, either I get down on hands and knees with the vacuum cleaner and advance the nozzle until I can see them start to hunker down and resist the suction and hold them there for a few seconds before sucking them up or, if they aren't coming in any great number, I'll use a scrunched up square of toilet paper to squash them but not enough to kill them, then leave them for a few seconds before putting them out of their misery.

I haven't had chance to test either method on the big black ants you get in the US but both methods worked pretty well against the smaller ants we get in the UK.

Meanie!

 

[tango]

Meanie!

It's arguably less mean to kill a few so the colony goes somewhere else, than to kill the entire colony.

 

[Wilhemena]

Okay, I want these little pests gone!
I bought some ant baits at Wal-mart (their off-brand) and set one up by a corner of my room where ants are coming and going. Supposedly they carry the bait back to the colony, and they start to die off. All I've seen so far are ants going crazy for the bait, but they haven's slowed down one bit. it's been about a week since I put out the bait. Any ideas? Is there something that will work faster/better?
On the 'plus' side, the ants haven't been going anywhere in my room except to the bait!

Yes, those products work slowly and more ants from the same colony will be returning to feed even though it is a nuisance it is how the product is meant to work so patience is a virtue. I myself have no patience and will use a service called Orkin to remain pest free.