Ants – they may be tiny, but they can be a huge nuisance if they start to infest your home. Foraging ants will do whatever it takes to get into your food stores, and they may even choose to nest in your cupboards or appliances, where they can cause a lot of damage. If you’ve noticed a sudden increase in the number of ants in your home, it may be time to banish them from your living space for good. Here’s what to do.
1. Clean any spilt food or pet food
You may be able to prevent an ant invasion by simply making sure there is no food around for them to forage. Make sure your countertops are wiped clean, and any food (especially sweet things) is kept in sealed containers. Put pet bowls in trays of water to prevent the ants from reaching the food inside them.
2. Wipe away scent trails
Once you’ve done a thorough cleaning of your surfaces, it’s time to wipe away the ants’ scent trails. Ants use these trails to navigate, and wiping away the trails may be enough to persuade them to look elsewhere for food. Mix 1 part vinegar with 3 parts water and use this mixture to wipe over any areas where you have seen the ants making trails.
3. Watch to see if the ants keep coming back
Now you need to keep a close eye on your living area, especially the kitchen. Have the ants come back, despite your cleaning efforts? Also, look closely for any ants carrying small white eggs – this signals that the ants are in the process of setting up a new nesting site.
4. If the ants return, switch tactics
If the ants pay no attention to your efforts to clean, you’ll need to change tactics. The best next step is to switch to using commercial ant traps. These traps are effective because they contain bait that is attractive to ants. And instead of the ants just eating the bait, they carry it back to their nests. This is the only way to target not just the individual worker ants you see inside your house, but the whole colony (which may consist of thousands of ants)!
5. Ready the ant traps
You’ll need to buy enough traps to cover a few different access points and areas that the ants commonly use. You can buy the traps at a hardware or nurseries, or online. Open them up and make sure they are ready to use. Read the instructions and remove all packaging and seals.
6. Place the traps around your home
You’ve been observing the ants for a while now, so you will have noticed where they typically enter your house, where they tend to forage and where their major trails are. This is where the traps will be most effectively placed. For example, you could put a couple of traps on windowsills where the ants come in from outside, another trap near your pet’s food and one inside a cupboard where the ants like to forage for food. Note that even though most commercial ant traps are sealed, it’s a good idea to keep them out of direct reach of kids and pets.
7. Wash your hands
It’s a good idea to wash your hands after handling the traps, just in case any traces of poison remain on your skin.
8. Observe the ants to make sure the traps are working
You may see more ant activity at first, as they will be attracted to the bait. Don’t spray the ants or wipe away their scent trails at this stage, or you will reduce the effectiveness of the traps. Watch to make sure that the ants are using the traps.
9. Move or change the traps if needed
If you do not see any change in the ant activity, or if the ants do not seem to be accessing the traps, you may want to move one or two traps to new spots where the ants are more likely to find them. If this still doesn’t seem to work, it’s a good idea to try a different brand of ant trap before giving up – different brands use different bait, and one of these may be more effective against the particular type of ant that is invading your home.
10. Keep the traps in place for at least 2 weeks
It can take up to 2 weeks for the bait to reach the rest of the ants in the colony. Make sure you keep the traps in place for at least 2 weeks, even if you notice an immediate decrease in the number of ants around your home.
11. Take some additional steps to keep the ants away
The ant traps have worked – hooray! But, before you get too complacent, make sure you keep your house clean to prevent a new ant invasion. Make a habit of wiping down surfaces, to get rid of food scraps and to eliminate ant trails. Make sure that your pet food is set up so that it is not accessible to any foraging ants.
If the above best practises still don’t eliminate the ants then it’s time to employ a
professional ant exterminator as they have the experience to solve the problem permanently.