Most days I find a few ants in the kitchen. It is almost as though they have materialised form nowhere - I can't see a trail of ants - or any clusters - just the odd one somewhere when I go in. Could they be an "advance party" searching for a suitable place for their mates? Are they just stragglers - or could they indicate a serious problem looming?
naaah, they're just teenage ants being antisocial
We recently bought a new house, and there were a similar number of "stragglers" near the bay window.
I put some ant bait down, and overnight it became an ant highway (they seem to get friskier at dusk)...
I've since baited along the outside wall of the house instead, removing the bait inside, and i'm back to the occasional stragger again (possibly just scouting for food sources)
John explained :
That saved me from asking the same question. We have seen about a couple of dozen in total in the house, in the past two weeks. About as many in the front room as the the kitchen at the back, which is nearest the garden.
Almost certainly an advance foraging party. If you can find the entry point put bait down there rather than inside.
Peter Crosland
You just need to be scrupulously clean. No chance if you have pets :-)
Ants are not parasitic on domestic pets so the presence of cats or dogs, or their absence, makes no difference. Ants foraging as the OP has seen them are looking for food. Most ants are omnivorous and will eat dead insects, plant matter, seeds etc. and they are particularly fond of sweet things.
Peter Crosland
OP - no pets - but found some spilt sugar today. Been cleaning and gap filling.
Except that pets tend to be messy eaters
In our case the kids are the messy eaters, and the pets clean up the bits that get dropped around the dining room table :-)
Wilkinsons sells fipronil based ant traps where the ants take the bait back to the nest where it is spread around the rest of the colony.
As it's also very effective against bees and wasps it's probably best to keep it in the kitchen where its lethal effects should be limited to ants.
£3 for a couple of bait stations - you'll probably only need 1, and keep the other for next year.
Borax and sugar made to a paste is good. It's what they use in Nippon ant killer. The ants carry it back to the nest as you describe above.
Borax can be used as insecticide, but Nippon liquid contains a related compound, boric acid.
Nippon Ant Killer Liquid is a sugary liquid with 3.2% w/w boric acid as insecticide.
Nippon Ant Killer Powder (and their other insecticides) comprise talcum powder (talc) with 0.5% w/w permethrin (and sometimes tetramethrin) as insecticide. No mention of sugar.
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