Ants INVASION!

[Dinamit]

Help, I don't know what to do!

Over the past couple of weeks the ants have slowly invaded our house. We are careful not to leave food around and now religiously hoover after mealtimes, but they still persist. I have tried natural remedies such as peppermint essential oil, cinammon, black pepper etc. but they are persistant buggers and nothing seems to deter them. I can't find a trail either.

Can someone please recommend a product that is safe to use with children in the house, that would end this misery for us? Any advice greatly appreciated.

Many thanks!

tea tree oil, takes about 4 days of putting it down every day, ive had to use it twice in 15 years, once at the back door once at the front.
good luck.

I think it's lavender oil that they hate too.

We had loads in our kitchen and they suddenly disappeared and I found them a few weeks later - i'd forgotten to put the lid on my golden syrup properly and they were all in there dead!

Ant stations! We just got a load from tesco as we had them last year and they are brilliant. They are little round discs which are basically ant traps.

www.lovethegarden.com/product-details/home-defence-ant-stop-bait-station

Thank you ladies.

I may sound silly, but I would feel bad about destroying a whole colony of hard working little ants...even as I am reading this I am thinking "these are the same little hard working ants all over my house". Our lot don't seem to be dettered by essential oils. How I wish lavender would work; get rid of the ants and make your house smell nice in one, brilliant!

Anyhow...I guess between the oils and ant poison there isn't much in between....If only I knew where they were entering, I would sprinkle there like mad.

Any other tips?

By the way the ant stations that we put down on Sunday had gotten rid of them all by Monday morning. Sorry but you have to kill them if you want to get rid of them. Can't really show them the door

I agree with AngryFeet - ant stations are the way to go. I wouldn't worry too much - ants probably outnumber people by roughly 3 million to 1

So I bought the ant stations and put them in place this evening. So far the ants seem to be circling around and away from them. So much for the "attractive bait", mind you the ones I found in Tesco are by Rentokil so perhaps not as effective?

Hopefully they will work. I only used two, but have another pack if needed. Fingers crossed!

I know that people are understandably scared of the chemicals in bait stations but, honestly, natural remedies are a complete waste of time. Sure it may deter the ants from that area for a while but they will always find another way in. I tried a natural remedy once - they just crawled up the wall to get around it and carried on as they were :)

Have you read that you mustn't disturb the ants around the station? It's really hard to watch this huge long trail of ants coming into your house, usually in far larger numbers than there were before the bait, but you have to leave them undisturbed so that htey take the bait back to the nest.

Good luck! I wish I didn't know, from experience, so much about getting rid of ants :)

We tried everything to deter the ants in our house - nothing worked.

Then the ant stations failed to work.

Finally worked out they were getting in through the invisible gap between the patio door and the wall. DH resealed patio door and they stopped getting in to the dining room.

Then they started appearing on the kitchen windowsill - getting in by going up under the outside window sill and in through a gap in the frame. DH resealed the window inside and out and they stopped coming through on to the window sill.

Then they started crawling out of the gaps between the tiles and the electrical sockets in the kitchen wall. They seem to be coming up through the space between the wall and the plasterboard. I was seriously getting frantic by this stage. I dowsed the perimeter of the house in ant powder and kept the kids out of the garden for a week.

No more ants indoors (the garden is still crawling with them). Persistent buggers.

I have been having vivid dreams all summer about my kitchen surfaces heaving with ants.

I use the Nippon bait stations. THey seem quite effective, although I agree that it is frustrating that you can't disturb the ants once you have put them down.

Yes, Nippon bait stations are very good plus vacuuming (lots and lots).

Although you mustn't vaccuum or wash the floor whilst the bait stations are inplace, otherwise you might disturb the ant's trails (which is how they tell other ant where to go). Though once the bait station has done its job then wash like crazy so they can't find the trail anymore :)