Ant eradicator - another bananas method

[The Snark]

It's got to be some unwritten law, the cure being worse that the problem. But considering how persistent and pervasive ants are, this seems about right.

Laundry detergent, preferably the commercial stuff that has no additives. Grab your kitchen blender and fill it about half full of detergent. Blend away until you have noting but very VERY fine dust. Dry the dust in something like a convection over, very low heat. Repeat the blending and drying until no clumps form. You want the dust as free of moisture as possible. You can tell it's very dry when it static clings to any and everything. Store it in a sealed container with desiccant, silica gel. It must be kept very dry.
Put in a fine strainer and lightly dust the ant trails. If possible, find and dust around the nest hole(s). Just a VERY light dusting the ants will ignore and walk through. Repeat every few hours or once a day. The dust becomes moist, loses it's static cling and becomes ineffective.
The dry dust clings to the ants - and everything else. They carry it on their legs and body back to the nest and undertake cleaning. The detergent is basically harmless and rapidly bio degrades, but if ingested - death. It only takes the tiniest bit of dust on the ant which also clings to anything in the nest.
A few repeated dustings and the usual massive ant trails we have this time of year are gone. The foragers searching out food for the nest to send trails are also gone from the fine dust on the counters and wherever.
The down side is working with statically charged anhydrous dust is a huge pain in the butt and just the humidity in the air will cause it to lose the static cling in a few hours.

 

[Tentacle Toast]

It's got to be some unwritten law, the cure being worse that the problem. But considering how persistent and pervasive ants are, this seems about right.

Laundry detergent, preferably the commercial stuff that has no additives. Grab your kitchen blender and fill it about half full of detergent. Blend away until you have noting but very VERY fine dust. Dry the dust in something like a convection over, very low heat. Repeat the blending and drying until no clumps form. You want the dust as free of moisture as possible. You can tell it's very dry when it static clings to any and everything. Store it in a sealed container with desiccant, silica gel. It must be kept very dry.
Put in a fine strainer and lightly dust the ant trails. If possible, find and dust around the nest hole(s). Just a VERY light dusting the ants will ignore and walk through. Repeat every few hours or once a day. The dust becomes moist, loses it's static cling and becomes ineffective.
The dry dust clings to the ants - and everything else. They carry it on their legs and body back to the nest and undertake cleaning. The detergent is basically harmless and rapidly bio degrades, but if ingested - death. It only takes the tiniest bit of dust on the ant which also clings to anything in the nest.
A few repeated dustings and the usual massive ant trails we have this time of year are gone. The foragers searching out food for the nest to send trails are also gone from the fine dust on the counters and wherever.
The down side is working with statically charged anhydrous dust is a huge pain in the butt and just the humidity in the air will cause it to lose the static cling in a few hours.

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[The Snark]

A ball mill would certainly help keeping the powder dry. And keep that damned dust from flying all over your kitchen and clinging to everything.

Ideally, find and mark the ant nest accesses, then mid afternoon on a warm sunny day, go give everything a thorough dusting. Putting out some bait near the holes would facilitate things.

 

[SpookySpooder]

Pretty much the same method (without the blending) but I use Diatomaceous Earth on the colony entrances and walkways and it works pretty well. When the bodies pile up, I just sweep and dust again. No pheromone trails = no raid lines

I wonder what's cheaper?

 

[The Snark]

I use Diatomaceous Earth on the colony entrances and walkways and it works pretty well.

I've used it several times. Seems only the nests close to where it is spread gets affected. Commercial laundry detergent, in these parts, a 7.5 kg sack sells for about $15-$18. 50 kg sacks for about $40.

 

[viper69]

Pretty much the same method (without the blending) but I use Diatomaceous Earth on the colony entrances and walkways and it works pretty well. When the bodies pile up, I just sweep and dust again. No pheromone trails = no raid lines

I wonder what's cheaper?

DE isn’t that effective when they are invading your home IME

 

[SpookySpooder]

I've used it several times. Seems only the nests close to where it is spread gets affected. Commercial laundry detergent, in these parts, a 7.5 kg sack sells for about $15-$18. 50 kg sacks for about $40.

Yeah it it's only a physical deterrent--which loses effectiveness when wet. It's only effective in killing them after they walk over it.

Detergent in this sense would act as a budget boric acid essentially. Much cheaper and more environmentally friendly. How effective is this with eliminating the colony in your experience?

What brand of detergent do you use? Will any powdered detergent suffice?

DE isn’t that effective when they are invading your home IME

I have been using DE effectively for years against roaches and ants. After switching from those powdered chemicals and poison baits, I found the physical deterrent more effective when used in conjunction with good practices like keeping all food items sealed in containers.

When lightly dusted over their point of entry, their nest entrances, or over areas of your house they use for transit. The scouts die before they can relay a trail back fo the nest. No pheromone trail, no raiding lines.

It isn't an instant kill poison and should not be treated as such. Death by desiccation from DE requires some very specific circumstances--of which physical contact and being kept dry are the main requirements.

Example: I will create a bait station out of sugar water and leave it outside the perimeter of the house. The ant colonies nearby that send scouts into the house will swarm the bait station. I follow them back to their nest and dump a pile of DE on the entrances. When they tunnel out of the DE and form a new entrance, the entire hill is DE. Anyone leaving or entering this entrance will eventually dehydrate and die.

The smaller nests die off after weeks, the larger ones can take the losses and will move their entrances over time. You can just repeat this until all nests around your house are dead or incapacitated so much they don't bother you.

But truth be told, they always find their way around the barriers. It is a constant battle during summers to find and block out all their points of entry. They come in through windows, outlet covers, cracks in the mouldings, literally anywhere they can tunnel and squeeze through. I have a chaulk gun with silicone loaded up and ready to plug every year.

Once somebody figures out a surefire way to eradicate them, I'm on board.

 

[viper69]

Yeah it it's only a physical deterrent--which loses effectiveness when wet. It's only effective in killing them after they walk over it.

Detergent in this sense would act as a budget boric acid essentially. Much cheaper and more environmentally friendly. How effective is this with eliminating the colony in your experience?

What brand of detergent do you use? Will any powdered detergent suffice?


I have been using DE effectively for years against roaches and ants. After switching from those powdered chemicals and poison baits, I found the physical deterrent more effective when used in conjunction with good practices like keeping all food items sealed in containers.

When lightly dusted over their point of entry, their nest entrances, or over areas of your house they use for transit. The scouts die before they can relay a trail back fo the nest. No pheromone trail, no raiding lines.

It isn't an instant kill poison and should not be treated as such. Death by desiccation from DE requires some very specific circumstances--of which physical contact and being kept dry are the main requirements.

Example: I will create a bait station out of sugar water and leave it outside the perimeter of the house. The ant colonies nearby that send scouts into the house will swarm the bait station. I follow them back to their nest and dump a pile of DE on the entrances. When they tunnel out of the DE and form a new entrance, the entire hill is DE. Anyone leaving or entering this entrance will eventually dehydrate and die.

The smaller nests die off after weeks, the larger ones can take the losses and will move their entrances over time. You can just repeat this until all nests around your house are dead or incapacitated so much they don't bother you.

But truth be told, they always find their way around the barriers. It is a constant battle during summers to find and block out all their points of entry. They come in through windows, outlet covers, cracks in the mouldings, literally anywhere they can tunnel and squeeze through. I have a chaulk gun with silicone loaded up and ready to plug every year.

Once somebody figures out a surefire way to eradicate them, I'm on board.

When ants are coming down walls from a 4th floor apt, DE isn't effective something called gravity makes the DE fall.

DE is only moderately effective IME. It takes a while for scouts to die, and more live scouts are coming. I never rely on DE, plus, in the right situation I've seen ants make an ant bridge over particulate matter that should be keeping them away. They are ruthless, single minded animals hah

 

[SpookySpooder]

Yeah in your case that's not gonna help you. All mine are coming from ground up so it's a lot easier, lol.

Their drive and determination is indeed amazing. Must be part of why they are so successful.

I've had a nest under the foundation for years that appears in a new corner of every room every summer, and if you plug the entry, they tunnel a new one nearby. Kind of impossible to get at them with traditional methods under an 8" concrete slab... so I'm hoping this laundry detergent is the silver bullet

The other small nests are very easy to deal with, being exposed at ground level.

 

[The Snark]

so I'm hoping this laundry detergent is the silver bullet

There is no silver bullet and let's fervently hope humans and technology never develops one. Imagine the Ragnarok scenario. Some chemical is developed, cheap and easy to deploy, a politician connected to a chemical company grabs the ball and runs with it, and wholesale use gets it deployed not just around human habitation but vast tracts of areas out into the wilderness. One principal major workhorse of the organic recycling department of the planet is severely suppressed and entire ecosystems get modified or severely altered.

With the detergent it is highly hygroscopic and moisture quickly removes it's static attraction ability. I got lucky by using several hot dry days where I applied the stuff over large areas of our property and the surrounding areas. Static cling equated into nowhere to run to or hide. It was able to invade deep into the nests not just poisoning the foragers but all the others that usually never come into contact with the environment outside the nests. This resulted into this rainy season when the hordes usually invaded turning the white tile floors downstairs into black moving carpets and massive trail highways into a random few wanderers.

So in dry areas inside the structures it can be used as a severe deterrent sending the message and poison home to the entire community.
I can't say I'm going to miss those days when our cats queued on the stairs and upstairs landing giving me advanced notice to wear socks and grab the vacuum just to go down and get my cup of joe. They weren't foraging food but simply using the house as a major thoroughfare between the nests out along the road and those behind the house along the river bank.