AIBU to ask how to get rid of an ant infestation arghhh

[whoopsiedaisies]

We've just come back from four days away, opened the front door and there are hundreds of ants in the hall and kitchen, literally hundreds. On the sinks, taps, windowsills, cupboards, oven, floor- it's rank. Any tips? I don't know where to start.

City!

bait stations work well, as does filling holes with powder, also outside window cills if you think they are coming in through cracks.
They take the poison into the nest so it kills all the others. You need to find their run though, where they are getting in and where the nest is.
Good luck, I know it's awful.

Ye Gods. It's the stuff of nightmares.

Sorry, mant to say we used the gel stuff on broken glass, only good if no small children or pets, also the powder and the baits.
They were gone immediately and didn't come back.

You can be rid of ants in minutes.

1. Find where they are coming in (in my case under the front door)

1. Take something sweet outside and place where they will find it. (cut up fruit or a big dollop of jam)

1. Sit back and watch them all leave. It takes about 10/20 mins and they all leave.

I've been doing this for years, they come in once a year, I feed/bribe them out, I don't have to touch them or harm them in any way.

Its a win win situation.

I've put one little bait station down, no mess or spray or danger to kids/pets.. and no more ants. Amazing little inventions! My house would have been full of them in this heatwave.

Killing them is unnecessary.

They are looking for food and have found it in your house.

Isn't it kinder, easier and cheaper to feed them a little something and let them leave of their own accord?

They didn't leave ours of their own accord despite as many friendly options that we could come up with. All over kitchen. Sortees into our bedroom (above kitchen) and on the bed. In the bathroom.
You do what you have to do.

Lemon juice, salt and vinegar did not work for us. We now use those bait stations so we can keep the poison away from the cat baby and the toddler.

If any of you live outside uk (and probably EU)

If you want to kill them - get some borax powder and mix with icing sugar

The icing sugar attracts them they take it back to nest and borax kills them

Although real borax has been banned in uk and EU but you can get it in USA

Diamataceous earth does the same as borax and is more friendly to all. Good for the garden too. DE was not enough. Nor were the other friendly things I tried.
When I lived in Russia they treated the flat with borax tofight off roaches. The roaches crawled over it on the way into my fridge

I've had some ant invasions over the years.
I've tried powder and it's ok outside but not very effective.
I've tried Borax (from dodgy website). No good.
They laugh at nice stuff like lemon juice and talcum powder.

Last summer was a particular nightmare as they seemed to be coming from all directions including an internal corner of a carpeted room - nowhere near a wall or window.
They will not just go away, anyone who says that has never come home to find a whole room crawling with ants, walls, floor, furniture. No to mention if they get in a food cupboard. When that happens you really have to nuke them but of course they will come back.
At that point I reckon Nippon liquid is the most effective, followed by the ant stations. A good spray of Dethlac around the perimeter is good, but only after you think you have conquered them.

I think the key is going in hard when you see the first ant in April. I put bait stations down all over the place this year and so far so good.

Lol at walla! It's voila 😁

The only thing that worked for me was finding out where they were coming in and blocking it off with blu tak!

I had an ant infestation in one of my kitchen cupboards. Tiny little things. I discovered it when I opened a bottle of maple syrup and poured some on my yoghurt. I merrily ate a spoonful. It was CRUNCHY!! Oh, that's nice, I thought, it's started to crystallise, just like honey. And carried on eating. Only when I was putting the bottle away, did I notice the ants scurrying around in the cupboard. On closer inspection, I found that the crunchy bits in the maple syrup were drowned ants which had made their way through the screw top. I've never felt the same way about maple syrup since.

This has been fab - only needed to use one

Flour!

Zombie!

@Lindah1 we have green woodpeckers which feast on the lawn, especially in dry summers which enabled the ants to build little hills. The green woodpeckers just graze all day long, and so I feel obliged to use manual methods or natural ones rather than any insecticide.

I find that regularly mowing (even though in prefer romantic meadows) keeps things under control. Also, the first sign that the ants are building their hills are very small piles of sandy, crumbly earth. I am sorry to say that I put the hose on full blast, and wash the little piles away, flooding them in the process. I would rather do this than use insecticide. It is only in high summer, when it is very dry and hot, that this is necessary on the lawn, otherwise they tend to focus on living under the paving stones (sand piles around holes also get washed away, when I am absolutely sure that these are not shared by bumblebees or other wild bees that dig into dry earth). And in the house we use the little pots with gel inside, that stop the nests from growing new generations, and sometimes, at entry points, a strong ant spray. We spray the holes and paths, rather than the ants themselves, as the point is that theybtake the poison home with them. Nuking them directly doesn’t help you the rest of the season. We have to ensure that the cats and children stay out of that room, so we do room by room and ensure the insecticide doesn’t get out to the lawn.

@CiderJolly thanks! Saw it too late. Feel well daft now!

@AppleButter good advice anyway! But this is the 2nd zombie ant thread resurrected yesterday