How To Deal With An Ant Infestation

Posted on: 25 February 2015

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Ants are one of nature's more persistent pests, and because they can find so many ways into your home, they can be extremely difficult to get rid of. If ants are swarming on your kitchen counters it can be tempting to kill them all as fast as you can, but that is only a temporary solution to the problem. Keeping ants out of your house requires some preventative measures and deterrents, as well as some proactive removal of the ants' nests.

Find The Leaks

Ant lines are frustrating, but they can give you plenty of information. For one, they can tell you how the ants are finding their way inside your home. If you look outside, they can also potentially lead you back to their hills. So before you kill off a line of ants, do a little scouting.

Of course, if you plug one leak, it's possible there may be more. So while you use the ant lines to help you figure out where the holes in your house are, do some touch-ups of your own. Use caulk on window and door frames and along baseboards, then check tile flooring for missing grout you need to patch up.

Put Up Natural Barriers

It might seem like ants are everywhere and eat everything, but there are plenty of things you can put in their way that they just don't like. Put down unbroken lines of powdered charcoal, chalk, black or cayenne pepper, baby powder, cinnamon or diatomaceous earth as pest control — ants will not cross these provided there is no opening, so create lines of these materials in front of every entrance the ants have been using.

Let The Ants Destroy Themselves

If you're willing to let the ants stay in your house a little longer for some long-term gain, you can set out some poison for the ants to take back to the nest. Instead of using a store-bought poison, however, create your own for better effect. Mix powerful ant poison or boric acid with something sugary like soda or syrup. Place your custom poison mix out on counter or on the floors near where the ants enter. They will swarm the poison and take it back to their nest, and within a few days they will be gone.

Destroy The Nests

It's one thing to keep ants out of your house, but it's even more effective to remove the ants from their source. There are a number of ways you can do this, and all you need to know is the location of the ant hills where your home invaders live. Take boiling water, soapy water, ant poison or a mixture of orange peels and water, then pour the water slowly into the ant hill. Pouring the water or poison slowly will let it seep into all the tunnels, killing most of the ants, and hopefully the queen. If you use something citrus based, at the very least it will cause the ants to flee.