It's that time of the year (Summer) in the northern hemisphere where ants are at their highest activity level. I don't have any issues with ants in the outdoors or garden, but when they start coming inside the house and invading our space, it's time to start killing ants!
As I posted previously, I have tried a few ways to kill ants:
- aspartame (Equal artificial sweetner)
- Raid Ant baits
- Combat Quick Kill Ant Baits
- Terro powder
- permethrin based spray
but no real success to date.
So, my new plan is to try boric acid powder and confectioner's sugar to kill the ants. Boric acid is relatively cheap, you can get some here
for instance.Here's the recipe:
1 part boric acid, 11 parts sugar, 32 parts water.
or for a small quantity:
1 1/2 teaspoons boric acid, 1/3 cup sugar, 1 cup water.
You don't want to use too much boric acid because that will kill the worker ant before it is able to get back to the nest. If you find dead ants nearby, then reduce the ratio of boric acid to sugar.
However, I think just trying one more approach may not be enough, so in the mean time, I'm also going to try reading up on the problem. I found a promising book on organic housekeeping
which I will be picking up that talks about how to kill ants among other pests.
