ANTS

[saltire]

I have Ants in my kitchen. I keep finding odd ones in a drawer and on the work surface.
They are kamikaze ants, they walk to the end of the worktop and walk off the edge - in Ant terms my worktop must be the equivalent of Beechy head!

I can't find the nest anywhere, and I can't understand why they are in the drawer as it's one that doesn't have any foodstuffs in it. The worktop ones are the same , i can't see where they are coming in from, as there are only one or two at a time (the numbers must be falling though the amount of them that are throwing theirselves off my worktop. I always thought ants went around in big groups and am worried that the rest are hising somewhere waiting to make an ambush on the bread bin. How can I get rid of them if I don't know where they are coming in

Will keep an eye on this thread. We get ants in the kitchen every summer. You can get Ant traps which infects the ants who go in, so they go back to the nest and kill the rest. We got it last year, but too late to use. I hate the idea of ant powder and small children.

I childmind so am wary of using Ant powder in house.

I'm off on a weeks holiday and don't want to come home to a whole army of them

ants have infiltrated our conservatory. They have come in under the wood are getting worse. I can't quite find the source of the little buggers either.

I am fighting a one woman battle with ants here too. They keep sending out their advance parties into my kitchen/family room and I have become a woman posessed. There was a thread about it at the weekend. I remember misdee said that she found that her ants were nesting in a pot plant in her kitchen so I'd suggest that if you have any plants then move them/get rid of them. I vacuum and wash the floor everyday at least once (dses are messy eaters), I wipe down my work services every time I use them. I've put all the fruit in the fridge and I wonder around looking for them. We have a wooden floor and I just know they are building The World's Biggest Colony under my floor boards. I'm going to powder outside the house wherever I can see any potential entry points.

Obsessed? Moi?

I will invest in those ant traps sockmonkey, but I'm not sure if they will work if I don't know where the nest is. I'm still puzzled as to why I'm only seeing onr or two at a time though, last year there were hundreds

The whole area our house is in is infested with ants - every single house here seems to have problems with them, and every year it was a huge battle.

We found the most effective way to keep the buggers out was to spray around the perimeter of the house with Ant Stop! every March (and then top it up every couple of months until ant season ends - think it might be every 3... need to read the bottle). The years we've done this we've been completely ant free.

The one or two are the "advance party" saltire. They'll come to scout for food and if there is any (even a few crumbs)they'll go and fetch the others. Bit like a teenager telling his mate there's a house party down the road and the parents are on holiday.

piglit - that's why i'm only seeing one or two, it's the advance party. Well they won't find any food on the surfaces, MIL was here at the weekend and scrubbed them to within an inch of their life and used 2 bottles of flash spray and one of bleach in the process (might poison them i suppose).
I remeber last year they were getting into unopened packets of biscuits, rice,cereal, cakes etc in my cupboard.

That's the outside perimeter I mean, in case that wasn't clear

Ant Stop is safe once it's dried, as far as I remember. It prevents them going over the threshold AND they also take it back to their nests and kindly snuff it there.

x posts piglit!

rubberduck, all the houses round about us are always getting problems with ants as well, it's as though the whole place is built on a giant anthill.
I put powder down outside, but it menas I can't take mndees into garden because of it. I will get some spray, and I might even spray the kitchen as well before I go on holiday

Yeah, the spray is much better. Spray round on a Sunday evening when kids are in bed and should be perfectly safe by the morning

I must admit, I don't like using it inside unless I absolutely have to. I have had to use it round the kitchen skirtings the first year as we had a nest INSIDE as well. But since then we've been able to keep it just outside, and I'm much happier with that.

(and those little trap things didn't work for us - we couldn't get them directly in their main path or find their nest, and ds2 (despite our best efforts) kept picking the traps up so I was constantly on edge)

I found a couple of ant traps in the shed, unopened so will put those out, but not knowing where the nest is makes it difficult

can i have them for DS1s ant world??????

First off have a look round outside and put down some ant powder, keep puts and kids away from it though, then (this worked for me) get a tin of honey or syrup and leave in with the lid off over night, (half empty it first) by morning you will have lots of ants from the kitchen in the tin and they all died happy.

Kimi - I can see why that would work, but would there not be even more ants the next night?

The ant powder outside will stop new ones coming in and the tin inside will remove the ones in the kitchen already.

we had ant problem and went online for solution. Suggested putting pepper at the point where they come in (in our case under the front door). We did this and they havent been in since!

I've always found the nippon ant gel good. It poisons them slowly and they take it back to the nest so it kills off the nest. they love it too. put it down where they're coming in (out of the way of dc's) its a bit cruel i suppose,but we infested every year,so it keeps them at bay in the summer

Had a problem with ants in our study - they were outside but coming in under french doors and getting in behind skirting board etc. - even lifting it up. My Hungarian cleaner sorted it in a day - she put baking powder down. All around the edges of floor where they were coming in. Worked really well and not toxic in anyway.

We have ants in our conservatory, and they really don't like baby powder!!!!!!
It has'nt got rid of them completely though I must add.