In article , snipped-for-privacy@aol.com says... :) We seem to have a different carpenter ant in Florida. (but we have :) lots of different ants than most of the US) :) I have had carpenter ants that had satellite nests all over the house :) with several dozen to 100 individuals and larvae in each. The mother :) ship was in the mulch right outside.. There were not even in a wood :) environment, just any convenient cool dark place. I had a nest in a :) plastic diskette case :) :) I'm in Texas and the vast majority of carp ant jobs I do have nothing to with wood at all, much less wet wood. The most common area I find them in are the hollow tubing in storm windows/door and screens. The oddest place was in a kitchen, took forever to trail them down and in a cabinet there was an old wide mouthed jar of home made prunes. It was capped with a three inch across cork and the ants made the cork their home. At least nowadays what we have to treat for them makes them, all ants in general, a non issue any more.
Yep, maybe it's a southern thing. I imagine these are just one more nasty imported species. Do you have the white foot ants there? They will turn everything you think you know about ants on it's head. They use multiple food streams, eating different foods and shutting one down if baits start killing the residents. They also seem to have an unlimited number of queens in waiting so killing the queen is just a minor disruption to the colony. We also have the multiple queen fire ant colonies here too that will accept workers from another nest if that one is destroyed. Ants from the tropics are tough and they can be real hard to get rid of. It is strange that the white foot ants have displaced fire ants around here. Usually this time of year I have dozens of fire ants nests popping up in the yard. This year I didn't see any.That is a good news/bad news joke. White foot ants don't bite you but fire ants don't usually come in the house. I guess white foot ants eat fire ants.
With all the hot weather here and there, it may just be too dry outdoors and they are looking for food/water. If they nest outside, you should be able to find their entry near where you find them inside. Put some bait outside as well as on their path inside. clean real well first, even if it is already clean. They can smell coffee cake and butter from miles away, and a crumb is a meal :o) Terro has always worked well for me. Down in Florida, it never fails that if I keep a box of cookies or coffee cake on the counter, ants will be in after them. A drop of sugary liquid spilled on the counter will attract ants, even when it is dry.
It sounds like you are describing /monomorium minimum/, or the Little Black Ant. You cannot hope to beat them, you can only hope to hold the line. I know from experience. (I'm convinced that the entirety of North America is just one large ant colony...guess I saw the 50s movie "Them" too much!) These ants are looking for food and water, and when they find it, they will come, oh yes they will. They're no fire ants, but they are persistent as hell.
Seriously, your best bet is as follows: (1) keep food areas clean - do not leave dirty dishes in the sink, use a trash can with a secure lid, put food like cereals and sugars into sealable containers, wipe your counters as you go when you cook (2) keep wet areas such as laundry, bathroom, etc. dry as much as possible; use exhaust fans, wipe up wet footprints from the shower and the like, and don't leave water laying in the wash tubs or wherever your clothes washer empties (3) if you have pets, do not leave food in the bowls; wash bowls after the pet(s) is/are done; keep any small quantities of dry food in sealable containers and large quantities stored away from the rest of the food in the house (4) use indoor-safe barrier sprays such as those recommended in other posts to spray door and window sills in high risk areas, spray along kickboards of counters in kitchen and pull out your stove and 'fridge to spray behind them as well; depending upon the potency of the product, you may have to do this as often as once every couple months (5) keep the area against the house clear of plants and plant debris; cut away any branches that touch the house, and rake away dead matter such as leaves, pine needles and the like (mulch might be OK) (6) use outdoor high-potency barrier sprays around doors and windows and hit any foundation cracks or other gaps in the house's integrity; put down a 1-2 foot wide barrier of granules that the ants won't want to cross
As others have mentioned, do not attempt to attack the ants at their nest(s) - the holes in the ground or if you accidentally unearth part of the colony. These bad boys panic so quickly when attacked that the colony will split at the point of attack and you'll now have two colonies with two queens to deal with instead of just one.
In article , snipped-for-privacy@aol.com says... :) Do you have the white foot ants there? They will turn everything you :) think you know about ants on it's head. They use multiple food :) streams, eating different foods and shutting one down if baits start :) killing the residents. They also seem to have an unlimited number of :) :) I figure it just a matter of time before we start getting calls on them.... did have a new species show up earlier this year and have now seen it around Dallas several times this Summer...the Rover Ant...makes the Little Black Ant look large. If ants are a yearly problem you might look into having the foundation and entry points treated with Termidor. Stops all ants from invading from 6 months to a year....hmm can't say for sure it will stop Pharaoh ants since they are an inside ant, but then again we rarely see Pharaohs anymore since Max force came on the market a number of years back.
:If you're cheap like me, half borax and half sugar will do the job.
I have some commercial stuff, a liquid which contains boric acid, but I've found that the ants don't care for it. I mix a drop of it with a drop of pancake syrup and they are much more interested.
I have the same problem every year, usually a bout in the winter and another in the summer. I'm fighting off the summer invasion right now. Every ant I see is a dead ant. When I see several, I wipe the area with a sponge, because I'm convinced that the ants leave a trail that tells other ants "hey, I like this place, I found a crumb of this, a few molecules of that." This keeps them in check. I haven't found external colonies, but maybe they are there. I suspect they are living within the walls, however.
:Steve wrote: :> What is the best procuct for getting rid of ants? I see a bunch around my :> kitchen window and sink, and I kill them, and minutes later there are more. :> They are the really small ones. :> I think they are in the walls. Do they live in the ground, and just travel :> thru the wall to the kitchen? :> :> I do keep my kitchen very clean, so it's not like there are food crumbs :> laying around.
My experience with Pharaohs was when I moved into this house. They were unstoppable it seemed. I threw everything in the book at them for
2 years.The problem was solved by actually treating the walls. I punched holes and shot a now illegal persistant into every stud bay on all the wet walls. That whacked them and knock wood, they have been gone for 20 years.
Absolutely true. The way they establish those neat trails is when more than a few use the same route back home, each fine tuning it a bit. Eventually they have laid down a perfect pheromone trail that any ant crossing recognizes as the road to the promised land. Ants are really pretty interesting and the more you understand about them the more you know you will never win the battle. The best you can do is fight them to a draw.
West Coast. It's long been my habit to keep cake, coffee cake, bread in the fridge. Most people I know, if they keep sweet stuff on hand, keep it in the fridge. Roaches are another concern. I rarely see ants in the house = perhaps three times in 8 years here? Trash pickup is twice a week, everywhere here. Nobody uses paper sacks for groceries, or keeps newspapers and paper sacks around because roaches roost in them. They even like the glue on envelopes = there were roaches in my mailbox last week :o)
About the same frequency I had them in the house up north, but that seemed always to be spring. During one very dry spell = a real drought
- I saw really strange insect behavior. Couldn't have an open drink outdoors or hornets and bees would be after it. Had breakfast at an outdoor cafe during the drought, and small bees of some kind kept coming at my eyes! Had to almost eat with my eyes closed. Wierd!
On Wed, 26 Jul 2006 01:56:01 GMT, Norminn wrote: .
I'm betwewn Ft Myers and Naples. I don't have the roach thing here, just ants. Whever I do see some "american cockroaches" AKA palmetto bugs I toss a pack of Combat baits around and I won't see another one for a year. I do have plenty of reptiles here that like bugs so ants are the only real thing without a predator. We don't mind the anoles and the occasional tree frog in the pool cage.
While you're waiting for the bait to work, some odors repel ants, for a while. They really seem to hate eucylptus, citrus and lavendar. I sprinkled some essential oil on cotton balls and left them around the windowsills they were crawling on, although an aroma diffuser might work as well. I also sprayed a bit of lemon juice. This kept them at bay, and it was fun to see them run for cover. But I did kill as many as I could, though considering the numbers, that's a useless endeavor.
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