ANTS!

[Aragarthiel]

Hubs and I have been fighting ants since we moved into our current place two and a half years ago, and we fear we're losing the battle. We've done everything we can but they're still finding things to swarm, like our laundry basket. I'm not sure where the trails are coming from because they only last about a foot from whatever they're swarming before fading off into single ants here and there, then no ants at all, but Hubs and I suspect we have a hill in our attic. Whoever designed the attic made it INCREDIBLY unsafe (as in, if anyone climbs up there they're likely to fall through the ceiling), and we can't afford an exterminator (by law, that's one service our landlord doesn't have to provide). We have tried sprays, bug bombs, bait, diatomaceous earth, and they ALWAYS come back. At this point we're just spraying them, then when they get bad enough we buy a three pack of bombs and throw one in the attic, leave one in the house, and throw one in the crawl space under the house, but it only lasts a week or so before we start seeing them again. Does anyone know ANYTHING we might be able to use? We can't afford to move out right now, otherwise we would!

[Chromatix]

There's a type of bait which is supposed to kill the colony (targeting the queen), rather than the individual ants. The worker ants take pieces of it back to the colony and feed the queen with it...

Have you specifically tried that?

You're probably dealing with more than one colony, too. Put down the colony-killing bait in all the major locations they appear in, and renew it regularly until they stop coming.

[mjr]

I don't think there's an ant hill in your attic. Well, I highly doubt it.

I would suggest what Chromatix is suggesting. Some sort of granulated ant poison. You have to be careful with it if you have pets, though. It works VERY well, but may be toxic to pets.

Though I've heard baking soda works well, too.

The reason Diatomaceous Earth probably doesn't work (my guess ONLY) is that the ants are probably too small.

Baking soda, I've heard, works well on ants, if you put it out, they apparently eat it, and it does whatever it does, and kills them.

[jedimaster91]

We've had good luck with Terro. You can pick it up at any home improvement store.

[Aragarthiel]

We've tried the colony-killing bait, but they're not going after it at all. And the ants are literally coming out of the walls, always closer to the ceiling than the floor, that's why we're pretty sure there's a hill in the attic. We've had them coming out from where our fireplace joins the wall, behind door frames, and even holes made by nails. It's insane, and we're tired of pawning Little Ara off on people so we can do our spraying/bombing and resulting clean-up.

[April]

Have you tried Terro? from what I've read, it's essentially borax and sugar water. It looks fairly cheap. sprinkle it on a piece of paper and put it out where they are currently coming out from. It may address the issue.

I also found this online, abbreviated, from here http://thebugskiller.com/how-to-kill...st-ant-killer/

Having tried out multiple products over the years, we’re extremely impressed by the Dupont Advion Ant Gel Bait and it is absolutely the best ant killer that we’ve seen so far. It attracts hundreds of ants within as short as 3 hours, and more will follow the longer you leave the bait there. The sight of all the ants swarming over the bait and dying everywhere as they move back and forth to their nest might be slightly repulsive though so be forewarned.

You should place the bait in a corner where it won’t be disruptive to your daily activities because it will have to be left there for days for maximum effectiveness. Leave the ants be as they start swarming over it. The poison will not take effect for hours, so it will take awhile before you start seeing dead bodies around the bait. Even then, you have to remember not to sweep or clean them off. The ants’ behavior of eating their own dead will be their downfall.

Ideally, you’ll want to place a couple of these baits in multiple places wherever there are ants because there’s likely to be more than a single nest in your home. If you think that the infestation is bad in a particular area of your house (usually the kitchen), placing a few of these baits in that room itself, in different corners, will speed up the process significantly instead of having to wait weeks for the infestation to die off.

Could they be carpenter ants? I was reading where they literally bore into the wood of your house....

[Aria]

Have you tried Terro? from what I've read, it's essentially borax and sugar water. It looks fairly cheap. sprinkle it on a piece of paper and put it out where they are currently coming out from. It may address the issue.

I also found this online, abbreviated, from here http://thebugskiller.com/how-to-kill...st-ant-killer/


Could they be carpenter ants? I was reading where they literally bore into the wood of your house....

Carpenter ants was my thought. Does the landlord realize his house might in fact be in the process of falling in on itself?

[MoonCat]

Attic is unsafe: Check.
Ants come out of the woodwork: Check.
Sure sounds like carpenter ants to me. I know you can't afford to move but I would seriously consider talking to the landlord about this. If it's carpenter ants you are going to need a professional to deal with this.

[Aragarthiel]

The landlord likes to adopt an "If I pretend it's not there, it'll go away" stance to all but the most emergent of things (hot water going out, for example). We can't do anything because he's a friend of my in-laws', and as such Hubs thought we would be okay with a verbal lease instead of a written one. We're saving up to move now but the earliest we might be able to is a month or two away, provided nothing goes wrong.

[RootedPhoenix]

We had good luck with lemon essential oil. It stinks and they go away.

Trouble is, that doesn't kill them. If you have carpenter ants, killing them is the way to go.

Vinegar ruins their scent trails, I've heard. But if you can't find the trails, that might not work perfectly.

[wolfie]

Do you have any idea what kind of ants? One article I read many years ago said that there were some ants (referred to them as "little black ants") which exterminators wouldn't touch. They're an indicator of deteriorated wood, and if you kill them off another colony will re-infest the place (hence the "hands off" - they KNOW that if you don't deal with the issue that makes it attractive to the ants, they'll be coming back repeatedly on their own dime to re-spray). Would be up to your landlord to fix the problem.

Others have mentioned carpenter ants. Although the landlord isn't required to provide an exterminator, if it is carpenter ants it would be in his best interest to bring one in anyway. After all, carpenter ants eat HIS building.

[Aragarthiel]

I'm not sure what kind they are, but I do know they have nothing to do with the attic being unsafe. THAT has to do with an idiot deciding that nailing some plywood to the bottom of a grid of two-by-fours would support anything you'd ever need to put in an attic. When we first moved in we noticed there was a spot that was a bit bowed in the ceiling, we went up there and found a monitor for an old Mac computer. I managed to get it out of there without climbing up into the attic, I just stood on the steps and hoped I wouldn't drop it.

[Heksubah]

Baking soda mixed with powdered sugar supposedly works. They can't separate the two and their bodies can't process the baking soda so it kills them.