My family’s house is on a golf course so ants are a huge problem. The ones outside aren’t an issue, but there seems to be at least one colony in our kitchen. The problem is that we can’t find it.
The ants appear exclusively on one side of the kitchen and anything with even the slightest bit of food residue gets infested within hours so there’s reason to believe the nest is inside.
We’ve tried to bait them with store bought bait and honey+dish soap, but we can’t find the nest itself. Any ideas?
That’s tricky in Florida.
Those houses are all built on poured concrete slabs, so any small crack or breach around drain pipes and whatnot can become an entry route, and the colony exists under the slab.
You can try to follow their line to and fro. They leave a little chemical trail to and from the food and colony for the other ants to follow. Then use those poison traps that they take back and kill the rest of their colony with.
What kind of ants? Depending on the type peppermint oil seems to disrupt the chemical trail @SkyzykS was talking about. Non toxic so you can use it liberally in the kitchen. It will just be minty fresh.
Diatomaceous earth is also non toxic and kills everything, but makes a giant mess.
Thanks guys!
That would explain a lot
I’ll try this tonight!
Burn it with fire.
I know…not helpful. But at least it’s not like that movie Arachniphobia where they find a giant nest of spiders under the house.
I have dealt with this a bit living in Florida.
Two things I have found help:
Terro brand liquid ant baits (to take care of the immediate issue)
Lowes sells a “barrier” type spray in a gallon jug that comes with a wand. Safe for indoor and outdoor use. I spray my house down once every 2 months. Helps keep out ants, roaches, and more.
@ChickenLittle the peppermint works
@cyclonengineer my parents are stopping by Lowe’s anyways today so we’ll pick that up!
Good news! We found the nest(s)
Bad news. It’s inside the space between one of our cabinets and the wall. We sprayed the shit out of the opening and hopefully this barrier spray works
Turns out, our front yard is home to 2 quite sizable colonies that were hiding under the rain water drain tube thing. Luckily those ants haven’t found their way into the house and we sprayed the shit out of those nests
That’s a nice big problem. Go for the nastiest, cancer causing stuff you can buy at lowes. I think they make stuff that hooks to a garden hose you can spray your whole yard with too. Might be a good idea in this case.
Glad to hear it helped and you found the nest.
They also don’t like vinegar, so in future if you need to, wipe the kitchen counters with it. It repels them. Good for protecting food.
When I lived in Texas we had Orkin on contract to treat our yard to keep the fire ants and other such horrors under control. Worth every penny, and it allows me to blame any shortcomings in my children on having been poisoned on the regular throughout their early childhoods. (Which is better than sending a 3-year-old out to play in the yard and hearing the screams when they stumble into a fire ant nest wearing a bathing suit.)
Fuck Lowes and all the other consumer poisons.
Look, we deal with scorpions, black widows, and fire ants in NM, especially when you cut a new pad for an oil well (and add fresh water, which brings all the deserts bugs to the yard).
All consumer poisons completely suck.
There is a professional concentrate spray called “LamdaStar Ultra Cap”. It’s illegal in California and all blue states because it is toxic as shit if you are an idiot or do dumb irresponsible shit like pour it into a water way, because it will kill fish.
But it works unlike anything. There are videos on Youtube on how to spray this stuff, and morons can figure it out, so you will be fine. Go buy a real Smith sprayer for $100 off Amazon. Put a gallon of water in the tank, put in 2 oz of chemical, add the other gallon. Shake. Don’t drink it or spray it on your littler brother. Let it dry before licking the floor.
Do crack and crevice inside the house and a perimeter spray around the house.
Wear gloves and, if you are stupid enough you may spray this in your face, glasses, as this shit hurts like hell if it hits your eyes.
Everything that is arachnid or insect will die.
Because you are in Florida, it’s probably also best to do a “moat” or perimeter treatment with a granular. Again, Lowes sells stuff to the lowest common denominator of moron so it doesn’t get sued. I recommend this nuclear product:
It’s also fantastic for lawns. Illegal lots of places, too, probably even Florida (because it kills fish). But not to possess. Just to use. So don’t tell anyone.
I am all for this.
However, you are correct. There a lot of laws regarding application of chemicals to lawns (in my county, you can’t fertilize with anything from June to September 30th due to runoff) and they will fine you if they catch you.
The Lowe’s stuff works well enough for me, just requires reapplication. I will look into the granular stuff, I just worry about it with my kids.
Yeah!
We had a bad year for ticks this year. I hate those little bastards.
I was (and remain) hesitant to tell people what to use, as anything that works so well inevitably gets used by idiots, which results in it getting banned for use by non-idiots. So use this wisely. Fortunately, both products are relatively expensive as these things go, so perhaps idiots won’t buy them.
Note, if you walked into a store, most places wouldn’t sell you either chemical without a exterminator’s license.
But the Internet is wonderful.
I’ve literally seen scorpions scurry into a welding shop at night (seeking water), they cross the perimeter where the Lamba has been liberally sprayed a couple of times months ago (you repeat more-or-less quarterly) and they die after crawling in about three feet.
Those fuckers are toxic themselves. I think they eat other poisons and get stronger. This, they die.
You just have to let it dry (the spray) or water the granules in. Then safe for children and pets. It’s used by professionals all day long. I’m just teaching self-help.
So this is safe. Assuming your children do not have exoskeletons, that is.
Not that I have noticed, but this is 2020 so I am not ruling anything out. LOL
Nice.
I used to hate going into the hull spaces and rakes of barges from the Mississippi.
Burned an access port into a rake (front slanted thing) once and the entire thing was filled with a colony of some kind of 8 legged bastards.
After we got done being creeped out we turned the oxygen and gas on the demo torches to blast and went Luke Skywalker on them and torched them into oblivion.
I wonder what would happen if you carbon arced a scorpion?
