How to Get Rid of Ants

Want to know how to get rid of ants?

I know how annoying ants can be. Of course, ants play an important role in nature, but having ‘too much’ ants in the house -especially in the kitchen- is driving me nuts.

Lately, my house has been invaded with this tiny ants (later on, I found out that they are grease ants, or thief ants). I left the house for a one week holiday with my entire family, and when we got back, we saw so many grease ants lining on the wall, on the floor, and all over the place!

Since then, whenever we left a little food trace, ants would gather within minutes. My youngest always leave his milk bottle wherever he wants to, and within minutes, we would find ants covering the spot. It’s terrible.

That’s why I spent some time to find out the best way to get rid of ants, and I thought I share it with you here.

Identify the Ants in Your House

I’m not asking you to be an ant expert or myrmecologist, because there are somewhat 28,000 species of ants out there! Still, to answer your question, “How do I get rid of ants?”, it’s always better to start with identifying what kind of ants you are dealing with.

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Because not all kinds of ants invade your house, you can at least learn what household ants look like and their types. Download this report – it contains the most common types of household ants in California. Other states might have different types of ants, though.

How to Get Rid of Ants in the House

Remember, the key is to prevent more ants from entering your house. Most ants come from outside. Instead of trying to eliminate all ants in your house area (which is impossible of course), you should make effort on preventing them to come into your house.

3 Tips to Prevent Ants from Entering Your House

1. Cleaning up food sources
2. Caulking entryways
3. Baiting

Caulking Entryways

• Examine your house for entryways of ants. Entryways can include cracks and crevices in walls or flooring, that provide entry into the house.  Windows and vents should be examined too
• Before caulking, make sure you clean the areas around the outside entryways. Don’t forget to dry them completely afterwards, so the caulk can seal the area
• Caulk the edges of windows and any outside entryways, and let it dry for 3-4 hours. See the instructions if you want to be sure

How to Get Rid of Ants in the Kitchen

The next step is to clean up food sources, and this mostly involves cleaning your kitchen.

• Find any food attractive to ants, and store them in closed containers
• Clean up grease and spills
• Apply sticky barriers to your kitchen garbage pails, just under the lip. You can use petroleum jelly for this purpose
• Pet dishes should be placed using water defences

If you have fruit trees next to your house, make sure they don’t worsen the condition by ‘inviting’ more ants to come to your house. Manage them well, or remove them if necessary.

To prevent ant nesting, grass and plants should be kept about one feet away from your house foundation

Ant Bait

Baits are the most effective control for most types of ants. It can destroy the whole colony when done right.

The idea is to make the annoying ants to find the bait (containing the killer ingredient), eat it greedily, and take it back with them to the nest, to where the queen is. The most effective active ingredients for this task are boric acid and hydramethylnon. Other popular ones are fipronil, avermectin, sulfluramid, and arsenic trioxide.

If you use residual insecticide sprays, the ants will possibly die before they take the bait to the nest.

Homemade Ant Baits

Based on the food they eat, we can divide ants into two categories:

1. Sweet Feeding Ants
2. Grease and Protein Feeding Ants

1. Sweet Feeding Ants

These ants are the easiest to control. What you need:

• Masking tape
• Jelly
• Boric acid or hydramethylnon

Place baits near ant trails, nest openings, and also around water sources and window ledge.

2. Grease and Protein Feeding Ants

What you need:

• Masking tape
• Peanut butter (4 tablespoons)
• Honey (6 tablespoons)
• Boric acid or hydramethylnon (3/4 teaspoon)

Place baits near ant trails, nest openings, and also around water sources and window ledge.

You can also use these registered baits:

• Terro® (OTC) – gel (boric acid/sugars)
• Pic® liquid (OTC) – gel (boric acid/sugars)
• Drax® Ant Kil Gel – gel (boric acid/sugars/apple/mint for sugar-feeding ants)
• Drax®-FP (PRO) – gel (boric acid with peanut butter/oil  for protein and grease-feeding ants)
• MAXFORCE – gel, granules (hydramethylnon)

It usually takes 5 to 10 days to see significant results.