OT-How to get rid of ants in kitchen?

[riu girl]

I have put out 6 circular ant traps, scrubbed out all cupboards and stored all food in fridge, but I still have some medium sized black ants in the kitchen. I live in the woods with a lake in front of me so used to bugs inside and out but each spring the ant traps are always successful, until this year.

Any suggestions would be awesome since the ants are annoying.
Thanks

 

[vacation_junkie]

I have put out 6 circular ant traps, scrubbed out all cupboards and stored all food in fridge, but I still have some medium sized black ants in the kitchen. I live in the woods with a lake in front of me so used to bugs inside and out but each spring the ant traps are always successful, until this year.

Any suggestions would be awesome since the ants are annoying.
Thanks

sprinkle Cayenne pepper around your house. We use to have the huge black ants..once we did that they never came back.

 

[robinb]

I had very good success with cinnamon a couple of years ago. I found out where they were coming in and poured a line of cinnamon around it. I also like the Terro brand of ant bait. It comes in liquid form and the traps are small rectangles with the liquid bait inside.

 

[mom_rules]

If you have pets indoors use baby powder. sprinkle around your doorways and baseboards. For some reason it kills and prevents them and it's not harmful to pets.

 

[3pletprincesses]

baking soda mixed with icing sugar will kill them as they love sugar but baking soda kills them.
they don't like fresh ground coffee either

I have pets and a day care so I have to be careful as what I use and those have killed all the thousands (exaggerated but not by much) of ants that we had in our front entrance.

 

[Camshell]

We've had ant problems in the past.

You need to know that ants leave pheromones on your kitchen floor. This attracts other ants if the pheromones indicate a food source. When we had ants I made sure to wash my kitchen floor a couple of times a day with lysol to eliminate those pheromones.

I also made "ant traps" with honey and a little borax in a small plate and put outside my home where I saw the ants coming from. The point is to get the ants to take the borax back to their nest where it will kill the other ants. As such you don't use too much to kill them on the spot but enough that will kill the others over time in the nest. Borax can be posionous so be very careful if you have kids and pets. There are lots of sites on the internet with the recipe for this approach.

 

[ottawamom]

Go to Canadian Tire. They have a product made from ground up sea shells. The sea shells are in powder form and won't hurt pets but it rips apart the insides of the ants. It's called Insectigone. We get ants each spring around our patio door and it works every time.

 

[sasamong]

If you know where the ants are coming from, you can mix Baby Powder and Black Pepper.

Worked MIRACLES for our master bedroom cause they were coming in from this little crack from our balcony.. >< once i stuffed some baby powder in that little crack and put some black pepper.... only saw the ones that got in but can't get out.

 

[Pinkgurlshubby]

We had an ant problem in the kitchen last year and cured it with Ortho Home Defense we picked up at Canadian Tire
We don't live in the sticks but in a small community with a retention pond in back so we are used to all sort of bugs and spiders too. I'm not a fan of spiders you can probably blame me everytime it rains

 

[pigletto]

I've only had ants once.. the year we built the house. The ground was disturbed so we had all kinds of interesting creatures that year

What worked was to figure out what kind of ant they were. The ones we had were ants that prefer outdoors but had found their way indoors. We treated on the outside of the house. It was a perimeter spray. Then we put a few traps under the stove etc and never saw them again. The key was to treat where they were getting in.

 

[SnowWhite]

We also swear by ortho home defense. We were actually told by an exterminator to buy it. We spray the perimetre of the house in the spring, inside and out and then again mid summer. We have not had bugs inside since. We use it on bees nests and they just drop dead. Its the best stuff ever!

 

[ChrisParker]

We have this problem right now and I've been going a but nuts trying to sort it out...DUH...should have asked the DIS!!!

THANKS!