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Getting Rid of Household Ants
March 28, 2007
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. – Finding uninvited guests in your food, in your cupboards, on your countertops and floors? With the weather heating up, so can ant activity in and around your home. Want to stop them in their tracks safely and effectively? Try using an integrated pest management (IPM) approach.
IPM “integrates” many management tactics for more effective pest management results. If pesticides must be used, only the least toxic products and formulations are chosen. IPM focuses on pest prevention by understanding pests’ habits and needs and removing conditions conducive to the pests. So, what can we learn about ants’ habits and needs that can help us get rid of them?
Ant Identification
Ants have different habits according to species, and in difficult infestations, it is important to know the species at hand. Carpenter ants, which can actually damage a structure, must be dealt with differently than smaller, nuisance ants. Ants may also occasionally produce a “winged” form which is sometimes confused with termites, a much more serious pest. For help with identification, contact your local county extension office. This article outlines general tactics that can be used against small, common nuisance ants.
Ants infesting homes are “social” insects, meaning they live in colonies. Colonies are usually outside underground, in debris, under stones or in rotting logs. Colonies consist of thousands of “workers” and one or more “queens”. The queens produce all the eggs in the nest. Eggs hatch into hungry larvae, which in turn become the wingless worker females. These are the ants we see running around in our houses. The worker ants’ job is to go collect food for the other ants. Why springtime? Ants, like other insects, are cold blooded – if it is cold, they are immobile. As it warms up, the brood in the nest starts growing quickly in number and size. With many new mouths to feed, workers must search for more food and water, fast - which is why they visit our kitchens each spring! When ants find a good source of food, they “tell” their sisters in the colony by leaving a chemical trail for them to follow. This is why one or two ants quickly become a swarm.
The Does and Don’ts to Get Rid of Ants
Using this information, now you are ready to rid yourself of common household ants!
It may require taking action indoors and out, where the colony resides.
Inside:
DO: Follow the ants’ trail to see what they are after and remove or clean it up.
DO: Follow the ant’s trail to the hole they found into your home and plug it up.
DO: Wipe up the ant’s chemical trails with soapy water or vinegar and water. Without their trails, the ants are lost.
DO: Vacuum up the worker ants stranded in the house.
DO: If you feel you need to use a chemical to kill the ants, use enclosed bait traps that mix food with boric acid or abamectin as the pesticide “active ingredient” listed on the label. Check if ants are taking the bait. Workers will carry the pesticide/food mixture back to the nest and feed the queen, thus killing the colony. These pesticides have a low acute toxicity to humans and are environmentally “contained” within the ants’ bodies. Moreover, since these plastic enclosed ant baits are tamper-proof, they pose less risk to children than do sprays, liquids, dusts or granules.
DO: Read any pesticide product label completely and follow directions exactly. Even least-toxic methods are not risk-free and should be used only when absolutely necessary. Even if you choose to use a chemical method of control, it must be used in combination with preventative tactics such as exclusion and proper food storage to permanently eliminate pests.
DON’T: Spray worker ants in your kitchen. Indoor use of sprays can contaminate food and air and it will not get rid of the ants. More ants will still come to the food from the colony outdoors.
Outside:
DO: Trim tree and plant branches touching the house. They serve as ant highways.
DO: Keep mulch, wood piles and other debris away from the sides of the house.
DO: If there is still ant trouble indoors, see if you can locate the original colony outdoors. Pouring hot soapy water on the colony may force it to relocate.
DON’T: Sprinkle pesticide granules around the outside of the house. Ants are finicky eaters and tend to focus on one kind of food at a time. This means, there is not guarantee your “problem ants” will pick up the granules. Meantime the granules will be picked up by some living creature which will be poisoned – maybe some other species of ant that is not a pest, beneficial beetles, or birds.
DON’T: Spray an ant mound or colony in a rotten log. Again, only ant workers on the surface will be killed. Pesticides can also cause a single ant colony to break up into many smaller colonies, creating an even bigger problem.
DONT: Spray the perimeter or sides of your house for ants. Poisons strong enough to kill ants on contact for a long period of time may not be the best choice of products for environmental and health reasons. These chemicals are “non-specific” in what insects they kill, last a long time in the environment and may represent a problem for inhabitants of the house via volatilization.
Maintaining an Ant-Free Home
Ants are attracted to food – if food is not cleaned up, they will be back. Keep kitchen counters, cupboards, drawers and floors clean. Store food in containers with tight-sealing lids or in the refrigerator and empty the garbage can daily. Also, don’t leave pet food out overnight or set it in a “moat” of water to keep ants out. Especially in drought years or hot weather, ants can be attracted to water. Look for leaks or other sources of open water.
Seal off any potential entry points into your home. Weather strip doors and windows, and fix any holes in screens. Plug cracks or holes with the appropriate caulking. You can also put down cayenne or black pepper around these entry points as a temporary repellent.
For more information on IPM for ants, visit the Pennsylvania IPM Program’s Problem Solver Web site at http://paipm.cas.psu.edu/17.htm. The Pest Problem Solver contains a collection of information resources categorized by pest or commodity to help people solve pest problems more effectively and safely.
The Pennsylvania IPM program is a collaboration between the Pennsylvania State University and the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture aimed at promoting integrated pest management in both agricultural and urban settings. For more information, contact the program at (814) 865-2839, or Web site http://www.paipm.org/. To view our archived news releases, see Web site http://paipm.cas.psu.edu/10.htm.