How do I get rid of flying ants?

[FourArms]

We seem to have several ant nests in our front garden. Yesterday flying ants emerged from all of them. As an emergency measure (kids playing in paddling pool right next to them), I poured bleach on them, then boiling water, then hosed it all down. But are there any good products that I can get to get rid of them?

I think they fly off by dusk anyway so you might find they've all gone
but the shops do sell ant killer
hideous beasts the flying ones!

I think the bleach helped the flying start a bit earlier , but there were hoardes of them. So you think they'll all be gone now? Might just buy some general ant killer and try and get rid of the ones that are left (normal walking ants).

Is it true that the flying ones are going off to become new 'queen' ants?

I poured boiling water on them and it worked but killed the grass. I'm not keen on powder because of all the birds.

I just sprayed raid all over them. They only fly during breeding, so usually only one day that you see it. Prob be gone by tomorrow

just leave them, bleaching and boiling them they'll be gone quickly

We have had them in our house It has been awful, they keep coming back every year for a couple of weeks it is terrible. I don't know what to do, i keep spraying but that just gets rid of the ones in the room and then the next lot appear from no where I called the pest people at the council but they said they just do normal ants......

We have been infested with them. Find where they are getting out and plaster it in ant killer.

If they are getting into the house spray with Raid

They fly, mate, the males die and the females lose their wings and try to start new colonies. They only need to mate once to be able to lay fertile eggs. Most of them won't make it. They will usually only be in the air for a day or two. If you want to kill them, you need to treat the nest earlier in the year, to kill them (and the non-flying ants) before they're hatched.

That sounds like a good bit of advice combustiblelemon, next year, about May/June i will be getting someone in, can't cope with all that again. Thanks.

We got the whole inside and outside and celler of our house sprayed about 2 months ago after finding about 200 squillion of them having a party in the sitting room!

It worked - haven;t seen another one near the boundary of the house all summer - DH white powders the ones in the garden as he has some sort of weird phobia about them.

That doesn't sound weird Twinkie1, it just sounds like efficient border control.

Twinkie1 - I hope you see this, who did you get? Did you get someone from the council or a private 'pest' company?

I really get what you mean, combust...about the hardcore toxic stuff! All gone hasn't it! Don't think you can even buy creosote anymore! Those were the days.......

Hi guys we have a major prob with flying ants but not sure where they are coming from. I have filled any holes or cracks in the living room as this is where they are mostly We have cleaned from top to bottom with bleach but no luck they just seem to get worse and they're freaking us out. We have a cat so I'm not sure what products we can use to kill them...any ideas?

You have a problem, we had the same, it is horrible isn't it. Seems abit late for flying ants, thought they had kind of gone by now. Tbh the only time i got rid of them was when we creosoted round the whole of the outside of the house and also removed the kick boards (or whatever you call them) at the bottom of kitchen cupboards and sprayed under there aswell. This year, nothing worked, didn't have creosote, i kept spraying they kept coming back, really just had to wait till they finished appearing. It is just disgusting isn't it.
I am going to call out pest people, probably a private company, next year and get them in before they begin to hatch, about may/june time. Good luck.

nonihoo, you need to find out where they are coming from to treat the problem when it's inside. we had a nest in our sitting room, and 2 in the kitchen. the one in the sitting room was based behind the skirting board, i literally drew a circle around the area to contain them with ant powder, then put down some nippon ant killer gel. they then eat it and take it back to the nest which kills it off from the inside out. the thing to watch out for, is that activity may die down, making it seem like they've gone, then 3 weeks later they come back. this means all the live ones died and hopefully the queen, but there were eggs in the nest too, which have since hatched. if you do the same thing again with the nippon, you should be able to kill off all the new ants this time round, and without the queen to repopulate, the nest will be gone.

to keep our cat and dc's away from the area while all this was going on, i moved some furniture and blocked access to keep them away from the nippon. it took a few weeks but that was last summer, this year we've had no ants in the sitting room thank goodness.

to find out where they are coming from, it's just a case of sitting and watching. they tend to be most active on warmer days and around late afternoon/teatime.

I think you did really well to keep the dc and pets away from the area, i just couldn't do it, how do you manage to do it when they are flying everywhere!!! I put all the stuff down where i thought they were coming from but of course as they hatch they just fly around the room aiming for the windows!!

blossom, it wasn't easy, but we have some big book shelves so i moved them to surround the area. the room looked ridiculous but at least it kept dc's/animals/insecticide apart!

Ahhhhh!!! I see!! Well done I can't really do that but at least you gave it a go!!!