How To Get Rid Of Ants

Getting rid of ants is hard work and sometimes they may even return so therefore don't be discouraged if it does not work first time around. The only way to eliminate ants permanently is to destroy the queen.

First of all the absolute best way of getting rid of ants is not to encourage them in, in the first place. If your neighbour has an ant infestation in his house, a tree, or any where else for that matter, that needs to be taken care of first.

Then clear around your house. Keep any brush, bushes, vines, tree limbs, or foliage of any kind from touching the walls or roof of your house will discourage most critters,not just ants, from trying to come in.

Now moving inside your house... Do the dishes regularly. Wipe down your kitchen counters with bleach and water every night. Clean your room and pick up food wrappers. Seal door sills, window sills, and mend broken screens. Mop floors with bleach regularly. Put food and leftovers (especially lollies etc.) in proper containers. And most importantly, take out the trash as often as possible.

Pretty basic stuff but very effective at getting rid of ants nevertheless!

How to stop ants from entering your house:

Next we'll move on to barriers and walls. Some of the responses I got on this were absolutely ridiculous: from filling holes with wet toilet paper to making little moats of hair gel and creating impassable ant walls. From my experience ants are determined little buggers and they can and quite often do, find a way around your ingenious little contraptions. Anyway... I'll include an assortment of them for your amusement.

Some of the substances people used to get rid of ants are listed below. You can work out for yourself how they used them:

I've heard of people using Laundry Detergent, Washing Powder, Salt, Cleansers, Cinnamon, Cinnamon Sticks, Baby Powder, Peppermint Oil, Deoderant, Bay Leaves, Flea Powder, Chalk, Black Pepper, Air Freshener, Cayenne Pepper, Ammonia, Shower Cleanser, Vinegar, a 50/50 combination of Windex & Ivory Soap Spray, Baking Powder, even Mint or Cinnamon flavoured Chewing Gum... ...Crikey! ...the list just goes on and on and on!

How to Get Rid of Ants: natural ways

Boric acid (Borax) is the most common ingredient in house ant control products, and it's abolutely 100% natural. One way to use boric acid is to mix 1 cup of warm water with 1/2 cup of sugar, and 2 tablespoons of boric acid. Then soak the boric acid up with cotton balls ,paper, cardboard etc. and place these near any trails the ants have established in your home.

Diatomaceous Earth (also known as D.E.) is not just for worming or keeping crawling bugs out of your garden. You can also use diatomaceous earth to line the outside of your home, around the edges of the house, to help cut up and kill any bugs that try to enter your home from the ground level. The theory behind diatomaceous earth's effectiveness is that the razor sharp edges of this fossilized algae cut through the exoskeleton of the bug (like a million little razor blades) and either poison the bug or dehydrate it. Most "Ant Powder" is the same diatomaceous earth that's used for pool filtration. It can be picked up from your local pool supply shop if you want to save yourself some money.

Whole Cloves are also apparently a rather well known natural ant control, although personally I have got no idea!

A cube of sugar and a drop of iodine works as a great and cheap trap, apparently!

A mixture of tea tree oil and grapefruit seed extract will rid you of just about any insect that comes around, so they say!

How to Get Rid of Ants: Ant baits

Ant baits come in all shapes and sizes colours and forms but usually have a couple of things in common: An attractant and an active ingredient to kill the ant. Some are designed to kill the ant where it stands and others to be transported back to the nest for all to enjoy.

The active ingredient could be based on either a natural or man made substance and some may be harmful to humans , plants and animals. Some should only be used outside while others only indoors. The best advice other than in this book is to thoroughly read the label before using.

There are basically two types of ant bait, and two means of delivering that bait.

How to Get Rid of Indoor Ants:

To get rid of sugar ants, pavement ants, or the common house ant, you generally use a sweet-based ant bait (usually a syrup) with a chemical like Borax, or boric acid.

How to Get Rid of Outdoor Ants:

The second kind of bait is a protein-based granule made from Diazinon or Hydramethylnon granules. These granular ant baits are usually used to get rid of ants that are a problem outdoors rather than indoors.

Nasty ways to get rid of ants for all you sick, sick ant bullies out there:

Cream of Wheat: after the ants eat it, it expands, causing their stomachs to "explode."

Mix some mustard with some powdered bleach, and put some on the ground (on a napkin or something). They eat it because of the mustard, but they die because of the bleach. It's ingenious.

Windex works because it desolves the waxy coating on the ants bodies and causes them to be unable to retain moisture. They basically die of thirst. Vinegar works the same way.

Flea powder also works very well to get rid of ants and kill them. You should sprinkle the powder both on the ants and also on the pathways and watch them disco dance their way to death!

How to Get Rid of Specific Species of Ants:

To get rid of Sugar Ants, House Ants, Pavement Ants, and Pharaoh Ants sweet-based ant baits should do the trick.

To get rid of Argentine Ants you need to use a combination of protein-based and sweet baits as an effective ant control.

If you happen to find a way to totally get rid of fire ants, that's as good as a winning lottery ticket my friend! Fire ants need a multi-pronged method of attack and luckily their range finishes about one hours drive from me so I can't help you out too much Yet!(I'm sure I'll be meeting one some time soon though!)

To get rid of winged ants or flying ants chemicals such as Diazinon and bendiocarbs are used.

Hang on a minute... ...Do you really even know what type of ant you are dealing with? I sure as hell didn't! In fact there are over 15,000 species of ant found World Wide! By the time I got around to getting rid of my third species of ant from my prized 1000m2 of dirt the first one was already on its way back.

But I am now on top of the problem thanks to this fantastic e-book: Now You Can Fire Your Bug Man: You really should check it out!

And the How To Get Rid Of Ants quote of the day is:

I find RAID ant spray and/or ant traps work. And you won't believe this... it actually says so right on the label!