Request: Getting Rid of Sugar Ants
Archived on 12/14/2009
I have what I was told are sugar ants. I have put all foodstuff in jars, etc. Now I found out they are in my carpeting in the living room. I am not familiar with sugar ants, so don't have any idea what to do. I sprayed bug spray on my baseboards, also. Please help.
By bdon1 from Praireville, LA
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RE: Tiny Sugar Ants
I don't know if this will work, but it worked for other small ants we had in Oregon. Make a slightly stronger than normal solution of bleach water (like 1 tablespoon in quart of water). Draw barrier lines where ever you don't want them with a damp cloth you've dipped and wrung out in this solution. Wipe in front of sliding doors, front door, along the kitchen counter, anywhere you've noticed them trailing in.
They stayed away for a few days at a stretch and we would just repeat. Good to do it when you can then go to another room until smell dies down.
My daughter thought of it, and tried it, and I've used it since. (09/22/2009)
By PIKKA
RE: Tiny Sugar Ants
You can get rid of them this way for sure. Using a 50 / 50 mixture of white vinegar and water use a foam paintbrush, they work best for this and literally paint all around the cabinet counter tops with this mixture. Also use a cloth and wash down all of the cabinet tops. Using the paint brush around the edges will get into the little cracks that would not normally be hit with the solution. This works perfectly. Also take bay leaves (fresh is best, but dried will work) and put them into the back of all drawers and inside to the back of all cabinets, the ants hate the smell and won't be back.
Also, if you notice any ants outside you can get rid of them naturally, as well. Use dry cat food 1/2 cup mixed with grape jelly 1/4 cup (they only like grape for some reason) with a tablespoon of boric acid, let it soak until it becomes 'soggy and doughy" and mix thoroughly. Make small little balls about the size of a marble and place around outside of house where you notice any ants. They will take the new food back to the nest and the queen. The mixture with the boric acid will kill them off quick and easy, naturally as well, so as to not hurt any other animals. Stick the little balls into crevices to keep out of site and reach of little fingers.
Good luck. (09/22/2009)
By Beau D
RE: Tiny Sugar Ants
Mix about 10% 20 Mule Team Borax in squeeze bottle filled with Karo syrup. Warm a few seconds in the microwave. Shake til dissolved. Spread into cracks and crevices where no pets can lick it. Ants carry it back to nest and it kills the whole nest. Queens can live for up to 20 years, producing many more queens. That is why it is so important to kill whole nest. Takes a little while. Several days to a week. (09/23/2009)
By muttmom
RE: Tiny Sugar Ants
Sprinkle dry baking soda liberally on your rug. Leave for a few hours and vacuum really well. You may need to repeat this a couple of times, but it should get rid of your ants, and you will have a good fresh smelling carpet to boot. They take it back to the nest and all there eat it and cannot digest it. If this does not completely eliminate them from your carpet then sprinkle with 20 Mule Team Borax, same procedure as soda. Between the 2 you are sure to get rid of them. (09/23/2009)
By jsham
RE: Tiny Sugar Ants
This is an update on my sugar ants. I did what someone advised. I mixed equal amounts of powdered sugar and borax, then waited till nobody was at my home. Then I sprinkled it by my door jam where they were coming in. I tell you they were having a party. I let them go. The next day they were gone. I still check every day, haven't seen any yet. I'm holding my breath. So far so good. Thanks everyone for your advice. I'm 68+years, never too old to learn.
Joanie (10/06/2009)
By bdon1
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Request: Tiny Sugar Ants
Archived on 09/21/2009
I have these small beige ants in my pantry. They are about 1/8" long. I have caulked around cupboards, put down new liners, everything is stored in Rubbermaid, Tupperware, and sealed bags. Today I took a can of sauce out of pantry and the ants were everywhere on it, and in the granola bar box as well.
What can I use to get rid of them? They are nowhere else in the house. The cat food is now stored in a container in the garage as well. I even used Windex thinking it would de-grease. Help.
By joycelgt from Turlock, CA
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RE: Tiny Sugar Ants
I don't know if this will be helpful or not, but I just read this person's response right before I read your plea for help and it sounds like this might be helpful for you. I live in North Carolina and I use borax. I don't know if it would work for you or not, but here's the other person's post that I mentioned. (notice your both for CA.)
"RE: Infestation Of Tiny Ants
The type you describe is probably "Argentine". They are a big pain where I live in California. They came from South America, but were accidentally introduced to the USA (plus many other areas) where they've thrived. The colony/nest often spans entire city blocks underground, and out here they're also all related so there's no inter-colony warfare to reduce numbers like elsewhere. They usually start sending "scouts" into houses in search of food (or water, if it's a dry climate) from late Spring through Fall, and invade (often with a double-size queen) if they find anything attractive. They're not poisonous as far as I recall, rarely bite, taste extremely hot to most animals, and (weirdly) are the cobweb/daddy-long leg spider's favorite food.
As far as getting rid of them is concerned, I've tried every darn trick I read about, because I don't dare use anything that might trigger my (severe) asthma or hurt my cats. As far as I know, almost nothing works, they're super-hardy little buggers. I finally found a brand with safe ingredients called "Poison-Free Ant Killer" that works really well. I spray any trails I find back to their entry points, they die instantly and those spots seem to stay ant-free for another year or two. Their website seems to be Saferbrand.com There's a useful FAQ about what's in it there, if the person you know is curious. Hope this was useful."
Posted on 05/06/2009
By the way, I check and the web site that he/she lists is valid and looks like a great site. They boast their products as being organic. Gotta love that if it's true. Good luck. (07/21/2009)
By shellyscorner
RE: Tiny Sugar Ants
I live in a wooded area and I get those little ants as well. What I did was get some sidewalk chalk and crushed it up till its a powder and then I put a line of chalk on my window sills my doorways anywhere they will get in and it stops them. I got this idea from my sister when I called her and asked her what she was doing she said she was playing with an ant by drawing a line and the ant was not crossing over it no matter which way she drew the line simple huh and it works. Try it. (07/23/2009)
By Margaret S.
RE: Tiny Sugar Ants
I had these things that sounded like what you have. Mine were maybe a tiny bit smaller than 1/8th in and very light tan. I live in a very old house and the caulking around the sink was cracked. They would come through these tiny holes and get all over my dishes. They seemed to like meat and grease. I also found them in my living room, climbing from the wood window frames onto my bird's perch, with the seeds and whatnot on the bottom from stuff she dropped. I used Raid Ant and Roach spray. Got it into the cracks and soaked the wood underneath. They were a pain. (07/24/2009)
By C T
RE: Tiny Sugar Ants
I too live in a wooded area and usually when we have a lot of rain out come these ants. I found the product called Terro at Home Depot. It's a small bottle of poison. There are homemade versions, but this is not expensive and it works. It works quicker when you find their source of entry into your home. It's usually near a window. It's just a few drops left on pieces of cardboard and they will be attracted to it and die.
(07/24/2009)
By kghsave
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Tip: Tiny Sugar Ants
Archived on 07/21/2009
Tips for getting rid of ants. Post your ideas.
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RE: Recipes for Getting Rid of Ants
I don't know about the borax recipe, but I used crushed red pepper - inside and outside and it worked like a charm. I had a colony next to my driveway and sprinkled some pepper on the driveway and in the grass and the ants have been gone for about 2 weeks. It really works. (07/29/2004)
By dhe52
RE: Recipes for Getting Rid of Ants
Here's a recipe for homemade ant traps from today's newsletter.
http://www.thriftyfun.com/pestcontrol/tf211065_pes.html (07/29/2004)
By ThriftyFun
RE: Recipes for Getting Rid of Ants
This is for roaches. 1/4 cup shortening, 1/8 cup sugar, 1/2 cup powdered boric acid and 1/2 cup flour. Stir with enough water to form balls. Keep away from children and animals. Toxic. (07/29/2004)
By Sharon Ott
RE: Recipes for Getting Rid of Ants
Mix equal parts Borax and powdered sugar. Set out in lids from baby food jars, or lids of similar height, just a teaspoon or so in each bait. It may take a few days, but it works. You may need to place new baits out after a few days in really humid weather. Be sure to place your bait in places inaccessible to pets and children. (07/29/2004)
By Patticat
RE: Recipes for Getting Rid of Ants
The borax and icing sugar (powdered sugar) works very good. A couple of years ago farmers were told in our area to try Sunlight dish soap to spray grasshoppers in the fields. My parents bought an industrial size pail of Sunlight dish washing liquid, but since they were never told the amount to mix with water they never did try it. We all had lots of dish soap. Anyway, we tried it at our place by mixing approx 1/2 soap and 1/2 water and sprayed it on the ants near our deck. It got rid of them. (11/18/2004)
By klawrence34
RE: Getting Rid of Ants
For a pet and child friendly method, I have used equal amounts of baking soda and sugar. I did this several months ago, and after a few days, I haven't seen an ant in my apartment since. (05/26/2005)
By ThriftyMomBR
RE: Getting Rid of Ants
I live in an area that we get major ants, they should pay the house payment we get so many! In the baths, all doors they come in through windows, I purchased numerous things, Terro at Wal Mart worked best like clear liquid on paper, but with pups we did not do that again. So this year I was dreading spring for the ants come marching in only I put cinnamon, on all window sills, esp. the baths then around the door entrances and no ants. The spice bottles at dollar stores, 2 for a dollar is cheap and pet friendly. Good Luck! (05/26/2005)
By meoowmom
RE: Getting Rid of Ants
I've never heard of them called 'sugar ants' before. But soon after we moved to NV, we had an infestation of ants, in the same places you've seen yours (bathroom, by the kitchen sink, etc.) and we were told they're looking for water. All we used was Raid and got rid of them, but not before some made their way to my stash of non-zip baggies of chips & cookies for my husband's lunches. No telling the money we had to toss out spent in those foods and the baggies, of which then I switched to zip style sandwich and snack bags. (05/27/2005)
By badwater
RE: Getting Rid of Ants
Chalk lines work too. Mark a heavy line wherever you see them coming in from the outside. They won't cross it. (05/27/2005)
By MCR
RE: Getting Rid of Ants
We were beginning to have a similar ant problem-- lots of tiny black ants in the kitchen. So my husband looked outside the house, under the siding, and found several ant nests around the perimeter of the house, between the siding and whatever is under the siding. He sprayed directly on the ants living under the siding every place he found them with some bug killer stuff from Wal-Mart. This was a few weeks ago, and I haven't seen ants in the house since. I am sure this was not the most environmentally friendly method, but it seems to have worked! (05/29/2005)
By Allison
RE: Getting Rid of Ants
Thank you for all the recipes. (05/30/2005)
By catboy777
RE: Getting Rid of Ants
When we had this problem when we lived in Florida, I found that plain old white vinegar worked wonders! I bought a sprayer bottle (like you use to mist plants) at the dollar store and filled it with full-strength white vinegar. Every night before bed, I would spray this onto the kitchen counters, floor near the garbage can, etc and just let it dry. It's non-toxic, won't harm animals or people, and the smell dissipates quickly. You could just pour vinegar on a rag and wipe the counters down with it if you don't have a spray bottle. Good luck! (06/03/2005)
By Becki in Indiana
RE: Getting Rid of Ants
I live in TX also, and sugar ants are such a sore subject. We were lucky and never had a problem in the first house we lived in. We have been in this house for a year and a half, and still have sugar ants. They are already in your house. They are in the walls. We have put boric acid powder in all of the electrical outlets, and we spray every 3 weeks, but you have to bait them or you will never ever get rid of them. I have tried all of the recipes and remedies online, but so far nothing has worked completely.
They may not come around for 2 weeks, but then they are right back. I have had 3 exterminators tell me that even when they put out bait, it may take up to a year before they are all gone. The most success has been with the homemade recipe of boric acid powder, sugar, and water placed around the house in baby food lids. They take the poison back to the others and eventually stop coming. I also wipe my cabinets down in the kitchen with straight bleach to deter them from walking there. It's been a nightmare, but every morning I still have dead ants on the counter in the kitchen. I just cannot afford to pay an exterminator right now.
If you own your home, be very aware of termites. It's not a matter of IF you have them, it's WHEN you will get them. We have had them at both houses. In most cases, you don't know you have them until you see the damage they have done. Good luck! (06/03/2005)
By suzi homemaker
RE: Getting Rid of Ants
When you want to get rid of ants around children's playground equipment, or in garden, sprinkle heavy with corn meal where needed. In 2-3 days, you'll ask yourself, where did all the ants go? They eat the corn meal, then poof, they are gone! I have to do it every summer.
By Brenda (06/03/2005)
By ThriftyFun
RE: Getting Rid of Ants
If you are having problems with ants, sprinkle baby powder around the area that they are coming into, the ants will not cross it!
By Charlene Laws (06/24/2005)
By ThriftyFun
RE: Getting Rid of Ants
I had an ant problem indoors and found that the 20 mule team Borax is a great way to get rid of them without poisoning your family.
Also, ants hate cinnamon. If you want to get rid of ants just sprinkle cinnamon around. You get rid of the ants, and you get a nice scent too.
By Noelia Gutierrez (07/12/2005)
By ThriftyFun
RE: Tiny Sugar Ants
Went to Home Depot - purchased TERRO at advice of employee. Took everything out of closets, washed shelves and applied TERRO on small pieces of cardboard and put in corners of each shelf. No more ants. Thank Goodness!
(07/13/2005)
By Jeannette
RE: Getting Rid of Ants
These tiny pests are often called Argentine ants (Linepithema humile) because they came from South America on coffee ships in the 1890s. They're a major pest in California (I'm near San Francisco) and all across the southern US.
It is important to know the type of ant you are dealing with since they vary in food (and hence bait) preference. Do a Google search on Ant Identification to find sites that tell you how to distinguish the various species and what their preferred foods are, if you are not certain. Most seem to like sweets. There are several good sites at the top of the search results list.
If yours are the little Argentine ants, which prefer sweet food, try Terro bait syrup. It's inexpensive. This is a syrup of boric acid and sugar that you place either in drops on a piece of cardboard, or it comes in little plastic trays that you cut a hole in for access. The trays wiped out my ant problem this year. It only takes a few days -- then no ants in sight.
You can make the acid syrup yourself, perhaps advisable if you have lots of ant colonies. Be sure you get the acid/sugar/water ratio right. You don't want them to die till they take the cocktail to their queens and larvae back home at the nest. A recipe I found on a Texas A&M site recommends 1 part boric acid powder per 100 parts bait material, e.g.1 tsp per two cups for a 1% solution. (08/17/2005)
By renlute
RE: Tiny Sugar Ants
Thanks for all the helpful tips. This is the only website I found that really explained how much of everything to use. Thanks again. (09/27/2006)
By Nancy Bird
RE: Tiny Sugar Ants
I've tried the Borax and it doesn't seem to work for the tiny ants we have here in NC. They literally can crawl right through straight borax and nothing happens to them. We are going to buy Terro tonight. (07/10/2007)
By Ellen
RE: Tiny Sugar Ants
We moved into the upstairs of a vacant home rental. We are not using the basement; it is empty. The previous renters let the lawn die and also let weeds crop up everywhere. There were what seemed a hundred thousand ants of different species all around. So when we moved in, we expected to see them.
When we first moved in, the house was pretty clean and we didn't see any ants indoors, just spiders. But a week or two later, sure enough, the little sugar ants came.
We battled them as best we could. Ant powder, bait, Vaseline on counters. I treated all of the outdoor colony locations as well. Ant powder kills them quickly, but doesn't solve the problem. Vaseline didn't really work, either. They were on the indoor house plants, anywhere where there was food, in the garage...they even went after bathroom products like soap or shampoo.
Very frustrated, we would spot clean any time we saw them. We cleaned them off the house plants on several occasions. I found this site and decided I better find out where they were really coming from.
By accident, my wife and I discovered that there were dozens of ants on her house plant that we had treated the day before. The ants "magically" reappeared. It finally dawned on me to check the house plant. The results were sickening. There was an entire nest/colony between the porcelain pot and the plastic liner of the plant! There were more ants in there than you could possibly imagine! I quickly removed the plant and disposed of the colony far away from the house. While doing so, I killed a single, large, winged ant, which I suppose was the queen.
Later that day, in the laundry room, I killed 2 winged ants that were mating! Finally, my wife found a winged ant on her elbow on the couch and killed it.
We haven't had a single ant inside the house since. So the moral of this story is to find out where they are coming from. Look closely and follow them to the source. It makes me sick to think of all of the thousands of ants that were inside our house plant, crawling all over the carpet, food, cupboards, and us! (07/17/2007)
By John
RE: Tiny Sugar Ants
We live in Portland, Oregon and have had these ant problems for three years now. One year, my husband and I discussed putting caulk around the baseboards and other areas we've seen the ants come through. It worked that entire year. But now, they've found new holes to come through. Just today I was putting clothes away in my 2 year old son's closet, and there they were. We're going to do a bit more caulking in there - I know they're coming from a tiny hole in the ceiling - so using the baby powder would be impossible and since he has clothes in there - I don't know if I want to use the Borax mixture.
Does anybody else have other ideas I can use? Oh and we've had winged ants crawling/flying around two particular windows in our living room. Any suggestions for that? (05/01/2008)
By N Hicks
RE: Tiny Sugar Ants
I just tried the baking soda trick and the cinnamon trick and neither one worked for me. I watched 2 ants come from hiding and crawl all over both, and neither thing bothered them. I don't know what to do. (09/16/2008)
By bubbles
RE: Tiny Sugar Ants
I live in Ontario, Canada and in the past year or so, I have had the very same problems with these tiny ants that have plagued my apartment. With the help of all these blogs, thank you. I have find a solution that works. Thanks to Becky in Indiana.
I've purchased a spray bottle at the dollar store and decided to spray the heck out of my kitchen with vinegar and amazingly enough these little buggers are gone. It is a bit of a funky smell, but it really does work. It doesn't cost all that much and they are no longer parading my kitchen. I recommend this method very much! I thought I would never be able to get rid of them. Thank you! (01/07/2009)
By One happy lady!
RE: Recipes for Getting Rid of Ants
I have to concur with the previous statements regarding vinegar. It's cheap & it works. My version of the generic tiny ant is undeterred by borax. Being fresh out of vinegar, I've just sprayed their entry point and trail with lemon dish soap & water. Ho hum.
I've a good idea where the colony is, am pleased to see that they've survived another winter, and am monitoring the activity of a new sister colony a good 30 meters away close to an attached garage. In Tacoma, I'll have to provide a vinegar corrective action every few days for the next few months only. These gals just don't seem serious about the interior (hic abundant araneae). They will keep doing their cleanup thing outside & I'm humbled to share that space with 'em. (06/04/2009)
By Anteeeegone
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