The worst type of home guests are ants. Uninvited and undesired, they savagely move in and start acting like they own the place. The worst thing is that they frequently target the kitchen, intruding covertly and grabbing food like a college student returning home.
The fact that ants can enter practically anything, even your pantry and food containers, is just plain unpleasant, even if there are more dangerous pests than these little insects.
There are possibly many more ants present if you’ve seen even one wandering about aimlessly in your home. Isn’t that a creative idea? The two most frequent varieties of ants—odorous house ants and carpenter ants—tend to go indoors during the warmer months.
They quickly develop into a colony and start to parade around your kitchen freely. There are undoubtedly efficient methods to let kids know who’s in charge so they won’t drive you mad. One method is to search for ‘ant control company Brisbane’ or ‘ants pest control near me’ to remove the ants professionally. And the other option is to try these methods on your own.
Continue reading to find out how to permanently get rid of kitchen ants…
Determine the Point of Entrance
Find out where the ants are coming from by spending some time observing them in the kitchen. Possible sources include fractures in the floor, deteriorated caulk along windowsills, broken window screens, or tiny holes inside kitchen cabinets that are fastened against external walls. Don’t close it yet; you’ll be going for the access point when you try to get rid of the ants.
Locate the Nest
As the ants carry their crumbs back to the source, watch to see where they travel after leaving the kitchen. Sometimes following their movements will take you right to the nest where the remainder of the colony resides.
The nest will often seem like a mound of rubbish or a pile of decomposing leaves, and it may be found indoors or outside (for example, on the ground or in a tree).
Direct Destruction of the Nest
If the nest is outside, remove it yourself with an outdoor non-repellent pesticide (like Harris Home Pest Control, available on Amazon). Non-repellent pesticides won’t tip off your pests, in contrast to repellents, which discourage insects and lead the colony to scatter and reorganise elsewhere. Ants may pass through this sort of insecticide without being aware that they have been exposed to the poison. Instead, use a half gallon of boiling water to cover the nest and drown the ants.
If the nest is within a building, such as a wall void, you can kill the ants there by squeezing a very thin layer of boric acid powder (available on Amazon) over the colony. The white powder comprised of borax and water has low toxicity to humans but is lethal to ants.
Any powder that is left over should be kept away from kids and animals. After physically removing the nest from the wall void with a vacuum with a hose attachment, immediately toss the contents of the vacuum’s dust-collecting bag outside. Boric acid should be reapplied to the empty space, and a joint compound should be used to patch any wall damage.
Set Traps
If you are unable to locate the ant nest or do not wish to destroy it yourself, you can eliminate the ant colony using a commercially available ant trap like Terro (available on Amazon) or a home-made ant trap made from a small, sealed plastic container filled with one teaspoon of borax and one-fourth cup of corn syrup.
To ensure that the ants discover the bait right away, place the trap as close as you can to where they enter the kitchen. The worker ants will use the lethal bait within the traps to feed the queen and her young once they have entered, thereby wiping out the whole colony over a few days. To ensure there are no distractions, remove any other food sources from the area around the ant traps.
Close off the Entrance
To stop future ant colonies from infiltrating your kitchen, close the entryway you previously located. A joint compound is a good sealant for minor drywall gaps, whereas caulk is suited for filling cracks around windows or doors.
If after employing the aforementioned methods you still find ants in the kitchen, call in the experts. Search for ‘ants pest control brisbane’ or ‘ant treatment brisbane/near me’ today.
Some ant species, like Carpenter ants, create satellite colonies that are independent of the main colony where the egg-laying queen lives. What it signifies to you is that: If a satellite colony is destroyed but the parent colony is still intact, ants may re-emerge in the kitchen. A pest control expert can assist in finding the parent colony and eliminating the ants for you.