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Housekeeping

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ANTS!!!!! in the house- pharaoh ants...anyone had them?

7 replies

oops · 19/05/2007 13:50

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edam · 19/05/2007 14:17

We had this in our old house, including the skirting board issue. Tried various kinds of poison. Ended up getting Rentokil in - turned out there was a BIG ant's nest at the very back of the cupboard under the stairs, in a dark corner we couldn't seek. Eeek. Rentokil removed it.

IlanaK · 19/05/2007 14:21

If they are the ones I am thinking of, then yes we have this problem. Tiny tiny red ants (not biting though)?

We live in an old 1930's block and we have them infesting the building. We will never get rid of them from the building, but the trick and battle I have is to keep them out of my flat. And to be honest, it never works 100%.

We have pest control contractors in the building and I Have talked with them about it. Basically, its no good just putting ant powder down. All this does is kill the ants crawling through it, but does not get rid of the colony. When they visit the flat, they leave poison in special containers that you pput in the path of the ants trail (which involves watching them to see where they go). Then the poison is caried back to the queen and the colony dies.

IN the beginning, they had really effective containers witha sort of granule in it. Now, they can't use these anymore for some reason and I think the new style ones are less effective.

We have to have constant vigilance. They tend to infest our kitchen and bathrooms. The reason for this is they like protein (soap). We try to keep surfcaces clean. And then if we see one, we immediately put these containers in their path. 75-80% of the time, this works. You see them coming and going for a few days and then they disappear. However, we just had a case in our kitchen that this did not work with. In the end, we put ant powder down which stops them temporarily.

Its a real problem and not one we will ever be rid of unfortunately.

cornsilk · 19/05/2007 14:32

We have ants in the kitchen every year. Not had those nasty buggers though.

oops · 19/05/2007 21:36

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IlanaK · 20/05/2007 09:07

Pharoah ants do not eat wood. Are they termites?

oops · 20/05/2007 09:30

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mummag · 09/07/2007 13:41

we had ants coming in our house, they were coming in under the front door and marching along the hall, under the living room door behind the sofa into the kitchen!!! We put black ground pepper down across the front door...... not been back in since.... fingers crossed

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