Best use of ant baits and ant traps in homes.

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As warm weather arrives in the spring higher temperatures may activate ant nests both inside and outside your home. You will see increased ant activity as nests resume nest-building and the production of young worker ants. All this activity requires food so ants will be out foraging for new food sources.

Control of the common household nuisance ants (not carpenter ants) is best done with baits (sometimes called "ant traps"), rather than insecticide sprays. Sprays only kill the ants that the spray contacts, not the nest. Baits will destroy the whole nest. And the simplest and least expensive is a drop of sugary liquid food that has been combined with boric acid (sometimes called borate).

During spring ants are most attracted to sugary foods (carbohydrate) because of the high energy demand of nest building. If a scout worker finds a bit of sugary food she (all worker ants are female) will recruit her nestmates to the food source (see photo).

Borate, a salt of boric acid, is toxic to insects when consumed. So a simple bait made from borate and a sugary liquid such as corn syrup is very effective. Baits can be homemade (see the ant baits article below) but keep the borate concentration to less than 5%. However, several commercial products are so inexpensive that most people just purchase the bait from their local home store or even grocery store. Terro (tm) is one such highly effective sugar-based ant bait.

Place your bait stations where you see ant activity and give it a few days to start working. If after a few days (often after only a few hours) you don't see ants actively feeding on the bait, like in the photo, you can move the station to a new location. You should see a noticeable reduction in ant activity within a week of starting your control program, perhaps even sooner.

Continue reading ant baits (at our main site LivingWithBugs.com) for more details about how all this works.

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