As I write, it’s the first week of June, and ants have arrived in my kitchen, bathroom, and garage. I placed liquid ant traps in those locations, and by the next day, those ants had brought A LOT more friends. It was scary! A minute ago, I took a break from typing to go and stomp more that were crawling away from my ant traps and across the floor toward my bedroom. This has been going on for several days. I thought it’d be better by now, but it’s not. I became discouraged with products I bought and was desperate for relief, so I phoned my pest man. He arranged for someone from his company to spread bait-poison granules around the perimeter of my house. He said it was good that I put out the ant traps I purchased, but that we needed to tempt the ants with bait before
they entered the house. He had a wealth of knowledge and experience, so I wanted to share it with you!
I understood why ants were drawn to my kitchen, but I was surprised to find them in the bathroom. There was certainly no food there. Knowing they live in the dirt, I identified the entry areas under an inside window and placed my bait traps there near the bathroom sinks. When SO MANY MORE ants were present the next day, I decided that luring them inside to that area MUST NOT have been such a good idea, after all. I moved the traps to the flower beds outside the walls so that the ants would find their poisoned food there in the yard rather than inside my house. I told my pest man what I’d done, and he said that was not a good move at this point. He said the ants had already left their pheromone trail to the food source in my kitchen and bathroom, and that they’d continue to come inside to search for that food they’d been promised by the other ants’ food paths. Then, since the traps were no longer there, they’d venture further into our house to find them. He advised me to put some new traps back in the spots where the old ones had been in the bathroom so that the new ant arrivals would stop at those traps. He said, “I know you don’t like the idea of attracting ants inside, but these traps will occupy them and eventually kill them as they follow the trails of the first ants.”
My concern was for our 3 outdoor cats and my small vegetable garden in the flower bed about 10 feet from the house. The pest control expert said the granules were only bait, and the chemical was not harmful to humans, crops, or our animals. Even if the rain washes the grains closer to the vegetables, they would not pose problems. Speaking of the rain, he said a little rain wouldn’t decrease the effectiveness of the ground treatment, but it’s good to put them out when rain isn’t expected for several days. He said it only takes a day or two for the bait to do its job.
The mounds we’ve observed around the yard since winter were created by different ants called fire ants. Their life cycle is the same as the smaller ants, but the treatment is the same. Some people try remedies like pouring gasoline or a chemical into the mound, but I use store bought fire ant granules, with pretty good success. The mound takes 1-2 weeks to die, although a few escape and migrate away to begin new mounds, which is troubling. I wondered if the product I’d used was not effective or if I should have applied more to the mound. Should I have watered the grains after I applied them, as some products stated? Here’s what my pest advisor answered: “Look at the product’s bag and see if it’s only a bait or a poison. If it’s a poison, all it does it move the ants. The queen could be as far as 10 feet underground, and she will move the colony a little distance away. We recommend a product called Extinguish, but use only a few tablespoons around the mound; don’t sprinkle it on top of the mound or disturb it in any way. When you disturb them, they go into a defensive mode of biting and running away from the poison you wish for them to hang around and eat. Expect for this to take at least a week to work.”