What home remedy kills ants by mixing cornmeal with something else?

Question

I have yard ants that have been killed by just sprinkling yellow cornmeal on them. I know you mix something else with the cornmeal to get rid of the ants but I don't remember what is is.

Answer 1

Boric acid, by itself works well.

Answer 2

You are supposed to take a pan of water and place it in your yard and put cornmeal around the pan . The ants like cornmeal allot but it makes them very thirsty. So they will drink the water and the cornmeal will expand thus for KILLING THE ANT.

Answer 3

I have not heard of the cornmeal but I just read something about aspartamate (spelling is probably incorrect) killing all kinds of ants............you know the stuff that is in Equal and Diet Coke. I am going to see if I can find the article again and I will e-mail you where it came from but I bet if you just put it in yahoo search you could find it.

Answer 4

Try this.
Go to the local Dollar store and buy cheep Dish Wash Soap.
Spread it outside by the house foundations and even use a spayer to apply it on any were you think a bug can crawl.
It's a good safe Bug away.
When it rains it could make a few suds but it will wash the area clean. and than just add more..

Answer 5

Cornmeal and Common sense. You may have to go get the other product.

Answer 6

I coudn't find the secret ingredient for your concoction, but while I was noodling around, I found this fascinating entry in a forum on ants:

From: Gary Springer
Sent: Sunday, October 26, 2003 5:44 PM
Subject: Fireant control/More effective without pesticides

In the southern states fireant killer is probably the pesticide most abundantly used by homeowners. The shelves in garden shops, and garden centers of Home Depot and Wal-Mart in the south are stacked high with several kinds of "Fireant Killer" in bags ranging in size from 5 pounds to 50 pounds Millions of pounds of insecticide are needlessly being pumped into the environment by homeowners TRYING to control fireants. Fireant Killer is a huge and extremely profitable industry that would take a severe hit if people realized how these ants could be more effectively controlled without pesticides. After watching the fireants on my property increase for ten years, I swallowed hard to push back my fear of poisoning the yellow shafted flickers that occasionally eat these ants on cold mornings and joined the army of homeowners who use insecticides in the fight against these pests that are silently threatening many native species of birds and animals that nest on the ground.

I started out with a 10 pound bag that was supposed to "kill the queen" but after using this pesticide, after two weeks I had five times more mounds than when I started. I then bought a 15 pound bag of a second Fireant Killer which the manufacturer also claimed would "kill the queen". This Fireant Killer also seemed to cause the fireants to relocate in more mounds all over the grassy areas of the property. And, the next two 15 pound bags of different Fireant Killers did the same.

Why? Because killing a queen does little or nothing to control most fireants. There are dozens, maybe even hundreds of queens in each mound of the most common fireant. That's why they're so prolific! Killing the queen does not cause the colony to die as the advertisers broadly claim. When ants begin to die these intelligent creatures simply move the other queens and eggs to a new location. Since fireant killer wasn't working I began to experiment with drowning fireants using a garden hose. Flooding the mounds with water every second day seemed much more effective than using pesticides. But then, after cleaning my kitchen floor I decided to dump the soapy water on one of the mounds. Realizing that much of the colony is under the ground and that the surface tension reducing property of soap may cause more fireants to drown I decided to treat ten more mounds with Palmolive dish soap and still others with Tide laundry detergent that same hour. After 24 hours I saw something I never had seen while using the pesticides. Thousands of fireants were lying dead on top of the ground where the mound had been and within two days most of the mounds were entirely inactive.

A second light application on those mounds with a few active ants caused these mounds to become inactive within two days as well. And, there has not been a birth of new mounds all around the area of the treated mounds. Further, a second application may not even be necessary because rain water will cause the mound to be flooded by soapy water a second time with no effort. Experimentation must be done to determine how much soap is needed and which is best but if you have a two foot high mound and dump one five gallon buckets of soapy water directly into the center of the mound so that all of the water dams up and penetrates into the mound, then splash a second five gallon bucket of soapy water on the mound so that the entire mound is washed away the soapy water will kill all the eggs on contact and drown most of the queens and other ants within a day or two.

If we can trust our scientists more than the pesticide manufacturers and have confidence that the soaps we use every day are safer than the pesticides in Fireant Killer, this is a far more effective, environmentally safer and less expensive way to control fireants in yards of southern homeowners.
Gary Springer

PS Several kinds of native ants prey on fireants and destroying them and their mounds will make it more difficult to control fireants. Before destroying any ant mound make sure the ants are fireants by pushing a stick into the mound. If the mound is one of fireants they will quickly run up the stick in attack mode. If the ants do not attack the stick and they do not sting when handled they should not be destroyed.

You learn something new every day!

Answer 7

cornmeal and hot sauce made from something extremely hot, like habanero peppers

Answer 8

mix cornmeal w/ dead ants

Answer 9

DYNAMITE WORKS FOR ME..