Very finely ground (espresso fine) caffeinated coffee, before brewing, works wonders on killing and eliminating ants. Apparently their systems cannot handle the caffeine and they die. We applied ground coffee to a few trouble spots in our organic produce and foods store, left it for a couple of days and haven't had problems with ants since.
We used organic coffee since that's what we had, but I doubt that it makes a difference. Buy cheap espresso beans, grind them very fine, sprinkle on and around the trouble spots, leave it alone for a couple of days and Voila! No more ants.
Thank you so much. We keep the kitchen clean, but this time of year there will be ants. I grind my coffee anyway, so this is no extra work. Let them get wired---can I train them to mop my floor?
By
08/06/2009
Borax mixed with a little sugar works, too :-) They are initially attracted to the sugar but end up also taking the soap back to the nest. The soap is toxic to them.