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- Jul 22, 2002
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I should have commented earlier in this thread since I work for the urban entomology specialist at Virginia Tech, am part of the extension program in Virginia, and am studying pest ants and pesticides (specifically fipronil) as my research project.
Although there are a lot of things suggested in this thread, most of them, if they have worked, worked by accident and probably more by placebo effect - the ants foraging pheremone trails were disrupted by whatever cockamamie home cure was used and they simply stopped coming inside, you could have cleaned up with soap and water and achieved the same. I don't even want to begin to comment on how impossible the internal explosion based cures were, suffice it say, that doesn't work. If any of you are planning on trying out the instant potatos with mice, they'll blow up alright, blow up into nice, fat, mice ready to raise some new generations.
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The canned response whenever someone asks about ants is that there is *no* good treatment for ants.
Sprays as a rule are only marginally effective. Most are pyrethroid based and ants can detect the spray - it makes an effective barrier for a few days and little more. However, if you can track them to their point of entry (typically a crack around a window or something similar), a good dose of cheap ant & roach spray will often work to stop them entering. Two products, neither of which are available over the counter, fipronil and chlorfenapyr (brand names Termidor and Phantom) are labeled for use as a perimeter spray outside your house and have shown promising results in field tests. If you are a home owner, you can generally order these in small quantities for personal use.
Baits are usually the best approach if elimination of the source is your goal. You can get two different granule based baits, Maxforce makes a granule bait that uses hyramethylnon as its AI, another good one is Advance that uses abamectin. These are sprinkled on the ground outdoors and the ants take the bait back to their nest with eventual colony death the result.
Those little circular sugar ant traps that look like mini roach traps don't work very well except in unusual circumstances because the attractants used are superceded by just about everything.
A good, cheap bait that anybody can make is to make a 20% sucrose (table sugar) solution and add 1-3% boric acid (borax is the cheapest way to get ahold of this). This stuff is readily devoured by most invading ant species and boric acid makes an effective stomach poison. Whoever mentioned inhalation in relation to ants, no, even powdered boric acid applications work via the insect consuming the boric acid while cleaning. This stuff can be set out in saucers or such, make sure to maintain the liquid level as once the boric acid concentration gets too high the ants will avoid it. The commercial product, terro, is just a fancy version of this and works well for those not interested in the DYI approach.
Gel baits that use hydramethylnon work well if you find that the ant species invading likes the gel matrix. The way to use gel baits effectively is to cut off a 2-3" piece of drinking straw, fold one end, then fill the straw with the gel. The bait will last a lot longer that way.
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Non-toxic methods are exclusion and diatomaceous earth.
You can often stop ants from coming in just by washing down their trails with soap and water. However, they will often just re-trailblaze their way back in if you don't eliminate what they're interested in. That's part two of exclusion, find out what they want and get rid of it. Unfortunately, the most common invader, the odorous house ant can nest in electrical socket boxes, in the gap between a flower pot and the saucer underneath, etc. and live on the tiniest amount of sugar, so exclusion may only be so useful. Also, wet petfood is a favorite of pest ants, so if you have pets, that's a hard one to eliminate, but not leaving food out all the time is usually a good start.
Diatomaceous earth can be used for barriers at doors and window sills. However, I would not recommend this to anyone of us here. It is persistent, easily transferred, and causes small lacerations in the connective membranes on inverts (and in their gut if ingested). I'd use any of the toxics mentioned above before this. Remember kids, natural and organic does not equal safe!
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As for issues regarding the invert collection. If you have ants actually invading a cage, that cage should be isolated using the moat method so as to avoid any possible cross contamination from ants entering the cage if you use any toxics.
Baits should be your first line of defense. I would try both the sugar/boric acid bait and the hydramethylnon based gel baits to see if either of those were effective treating the invaders, and then move onto granular bait outdoors, both for cost reasons as well as not being a fan of the wide sweep approach to pest control.
Only if you consider the problem serious and not responding to baits should you move onto a perimeter spray as it is decidedly non-specific in what it will affect. Every insect that entered your home would be suspect for 2-3 months after treatment.
You should make every effort to see if you can trail the foragers to both what they are attracted to in your home as well as where they are coming in and eliminate both.
The least preferable is any sort of pyrethroid based spray in the house, both because they are generally ineffective, but the most likely to have short-term cross contamination.
Although there are a lot of things suggested in this thread, most of them, if they have worked, worked by accident and probably more by placebo effect - the ants foraging pheremone trails were disrupted by whatever cockamamie home cure was used and they simply stopped coming inside, you could have cleaned up with soap and water and achieved the same. I don't even want to begin to comment on how impossible the internal explosion based cures were, suffice it say, that doesn't work. If any of you are planning on trying out the instant potatos with mice, they'll blow up alright, blow up into nice, fat, mice ready to raise some new generations.
------------------
The canned response whenever someone asks about ants is that there is *no* good treatment for ants.
Sprays as a rule are only marginally effective. Most are pyrethroid based and ants can detect the spray - it makes an effective barrier for a few days and little more. However, if you can track them to their point of entry (typically a crack around a window or something similar), a good dose of cheap ant & roach spray will often work to stop them entering. Two products, neither of which are available over the counter, fipronil and chlorfenapyr (brand names Termidor and Phantom) are labeled for use as a perimeter spray outside your house and have shown promising results in field tests. If you are a home owner, you can generally order these in small quantities for personal use.
Baits are usually the best approach if elimination of the source is your goal. You can get two different granule based baits, Maxforce makes a granule bait that uses hyramethylnon as its AI, another good one is Advance that uses abamectin. These are sprinkled on the ground outdoors and the ants take the bait back to their nest with eventual colony death the result.
Those little circular sugar ant traps that look like mini roach traps don't work very well except in unusual circumstances because the attractants used are superceded by just about everything.
A good, cheap bait that anybody can make is to make a 20% sucrose (table sugar) solution and add 1-3% boric acid (borax is the cheapest way to get ahold of this). This stuff is readily devoured by most invading ant species and boric acid makes an effective stomach poison. Whoever mentioned inhalation in relation to ants, no, even powdered boric acid applications work via the insect consuming the boric acid while cleaning. This stuff can be set out in saucers or such, make sure to maintain the liquid level as once the boric acid concentration gets too high the ants will avoid it. The commercial product, terro, is just a fancy version of this and works well for those not interested in the DYI approach.
Gel baits that use hydramethylnon work well if you find that the ant species invading likes the gel matrix. The way to use gel baits effectively is to cut off a 2-3" piece of drinking straw, fold one end, then fill the straw with the gel. The bait will last a lot longer that way.
-------------------
Non-toxic methods are exclusion and diatomaceous earth.
You can often stop ants from coming in just by washing down their trails with soap and water. However, they will often just re-trailblaze their way back in if you don't eliminate what they're interested in. That's part two of exclusion, find out what they want and get rid of it. Unfortunately, the most common invader, the odorous house ant can nest in electrical socket boxes, in the gap between a flower pot and the saucer underneath, etc. and live on the tiniest amount of sugar, so exclusion may only be so useful. Also, wet petfood is a favorite of pest ants, so if you have pets, that's a hard one to eliminate, but not leaving food out all the time is usually a good start.
Diatomaceous earth can be used for barriers at doors and window sills. However, I would not recommend this to anyone of us here. It is persistent, easily transferred, and causes small lacerations in the connective membranes on inverts (and in their gut if ingested). I'd use any of the toxics mentioned above before this. Remember kids, natural and organic does not equal safe!
---------------------
As for issues regarding the invert collection. If you have ants actually invading a cage, that cage should be isolated using the moat method so as to avoid any possible cross contamination from ants entering the cage if you use any toxics.
Baits should be your first line of defense. I would try both the sugar/boric acid bait and the hydramethylnon based gel baits to see if either of those were effective treating the invaders, and then move onto granular bait outdoors, both for cost reasons as well as not being a fan of the wide sweep approach to pest control.
Only if you consider the problem serious and not responding to baits should you move onto a perimeter spray as it is decidedly non-specific in what it will affect. Every insect that entered your home would be suspect for 2-3 months after treatment.
You should make every effort to see if you can trail the foragers to both what they are attracted to in your home as well as where they are coming in and eliminate both.
The least preferable is any sort of pyrethroid based spray in the house, both because they are generally ineffective, but the most likely to have short-term cross contamination.
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