Every summer, sugar ants try to move in to my house. For the last few years I've been using a DIY ant bait that works better than anything I used to get at the hardware store.
1 cup water
1/2 cup sugar
1.5 -2 tablespoons Borax (this interferes with ants digestive system and kills them.) I've tried using bait with higher concentrations of Borax, but then ants avoided the bait.
Boil the water, add the sugar, stir until clear. Pour into a glass container, add Borax. Stir until clear.
Soak cotton balls, and place them on small, flat saucers/lids, or pieces of tin foil. Place the traps anywhere you see ant activity.
Alternatively, you can just pour the bait directly into the saucers or lids. I prefer cotton balls because the ants will actually climb onto them to feed, so you get more ants feeding at once.
The downside to this is that for a day or two, you're going to have a mess of ants climbing all over your traps. NGL, it's a little gross.
The upside is that the ants will take the bait back to their nest, and feed it to the entire colony, including the queen. You'll know the colony is dead when the traps are mostly empty and any ants that remain aren't moving.
Total cost for one cup of ant bait is about $.50 US. You can store it in the fridge for several weeks.
Borax is non-toxic to humans. My pets have never shown any interest in the traps (and this includes a beagle that sees garbage cans as all-you-can-eat buffets.) Having said that, ingesting Borax isn't likely to make your pets happy if they do get into it, so keep an eye out.
June 22, 2018 at 09:30AM
