Help with ants in my apartment!?

Question

I cant take it anymore! I live upstairs and moved from a downstairs unit in August. My dwn stairs unit had no problem with ants & since moving up I have had nothing but problems. I can have nothing out on counters etc. but they are there, in the cupboards, cracks by the stove, electrical outlets, in bathroom, now up near ceiling over my bedroom door! I have told manager & they have had a pest control guy out t spray 1 x a month, no help. Its like I live on a ant hill. I know ants can be common but having to wash everything every few days is MAD! how can I manage the ANTS!!

Answer 1

I had ants and we found the nest and detroyed it. We still had them coming in and would put a 20oz drinking glass (the sides must be up and down, not slanted) with a little bit of coke in the bottom (about 2 inches deep). The ants would be attracted to the sweetness of the coke, and actually go into the pool. They couldn't climb out. When there were a few, I would squirt a small amount of lighter fluid into the glass and it would kill them immediately. I would then flush the bodies down the toilet, rinse the glass, and put more coke in it. It worked as they stopped coming in.

Answer 2

If they are sweet eaters, it's easy. This may work for grease eaters too but I've never tried a grease formula. Do you know where to get any Borax? Like the Twenty Mule Team type, some groceries have it in the laundry section. Any way, Take some cheap syrup you may have left over and heat it up in the micro wave and add borax until no more will dissolve. This may take several heatings adding a little at a time. Store this in a properly marked jar. Leave small amounts, Dime sized puddles, on squares of glossy cardboard, where their trials will cross over, and they are out of your way and the reach of children or pets. If they are grease eaters, you might try mixing the borax in warm bacon grease, but I haven't tried that. They take this back home and share it with the queen and the egg tenders. It disrupts the digestive process and when the queen dies, so does the colony. It takes a while. but it does the trick. As long as the ants keep coming , you have to replace this bait... If you can find a product called Terro at the store, it's the same basic thing , Borax, done for you. I have had good luck making my own, but you may not want to and Terro is really good stuff.

Answer 3

Ants are very difficult to get rid of because the little buggers are so small, live in large colonies, and you don't see all (or most) of them at any given time.

You'll need to be patient and follow the ants. They walk in a line established by a previous scout. Backtracking, you can see where they came from. At that point, you can start to take action.

Don't have the bug guy spray your place down every month. You may as well smoke a carton of cigarettes every day. There are non-toxic (to you anyway) ways of getting rid of them.

If you use boric acid baits, the workers will bring the poisoned food back to the rest of the colony. They all share the food, so they will all die.

The other thing you could use is called a dessicant. This is dust that dries out the protective oils on the ant's bodies. They die because they become dehydrated. Both of these things are relatively easy to obtain and are a lot less expensive than the bug guy. Good luck.

Answer 4

Since your landlord is having to pay someone to spray once a month, try talking to them. Suggest that you'd be happier, and they'd same money if they had an expert come in to find and solve the root of the problem. It would be a bigger expense up front for them, but cheaper in the long run. And you'd be happier and less likely to move. (You might even be able to do some research and give your landlord a list of possible companies)

Since you're renting, there's not a lot you can do, but try taping up some of the cracks in your apartment. However, when you remove the tape, some of the paint may come off, so be careful.
You might be able to use some silicone caulking, especially the stuff that is designed to be removeable. Check with your local hardware store.

Do you know what kind of ants you have? Do they eat wood, sugar or meat? Or all of the above?

Since it sounds like you're keeping the place pretty clean, that doesn't sound like the problem. However, many ants leave a scent trail for the others to follow. If you become super, super, extra, fanatically clean for a few days, that might help. (Scrub, scrub, scrub).

Good luck!

Answer 5

I had the same problem. When I first moved into an upstairs apartment I had the little sugar ants in my kitchen. A friend suggested I try Torro Liquid ant killer. It comes in a very small bottle and you put a drop of it on a pieces of cardboard around the ant trails. they eat the sweet poisonous stuff and take it back to nest where it kills them. This stuff works great! It may take a few days for them to all die, But I haven't seen an ant since. You can buy it at a hardware store. Good Luck, It's worth a try.

Answer 6

All you need to do is figure out where the little buggers are coming in at, and sprinkle a baby powder firewall.

Ants that are already in your house will lose their scent trail, get lost, and eventually die; ants that are trying to come into your house won't be able to crest the mountain of white and unable to find their way back to the colony. Ants outside your house won’t ever come in because they hit a dead end at the baby powder. Using this method of prevention often takes detective work to see where ants came from - if you put baby powder at the wrong opening, they’ll just keep coming.

....also lemon-scented cleaner apparently ants hate that lemony fresh smell.

Answer 7

Spray ant repellent on the outdoors of your house. alongside the front door and all over the homestead windows. additionally, there are ant traps, corresponding to roach traps. save all sugar form ingredients tightly sealed, alongside with cereal. in case you spot a path that the ants are utilising, spray the path to this is source (or as close as achieveable). Spray on a regular basis for a week. additionally seek advice from the home team. this is there duty to maintain the infestation to a minimum. There are pesticides that they'd use that don't scent (in assessment to Raid). we've a pest administration guy spray our homestead as quickly as a month. He sprays my mattress room and that i can not scent a undertaking. I stay in Vegas and we are at one hundred so i understand warm.

Answer 8

Ants become a nuisance when they enter homes. Instead of spending money on costly pest control, you can get rid of ants by removing the food source and using soap water.
I found the information at http://www.pests.in useful.

Answer 9

do you happen to live in Florida, my husband said that happened to him alot when he lived there

the pest control needs to find out where the ants are coming from & put up a poisionous bate for the ants to bring back to the nest, it will kill all of them & you should be rid of them for good

worked for us when we had carpenter ants in our home

GOOD LUCK

Answer 10

Bleach, bleach and more bleach.

Bleach (like Clorox) is an extremely effective pesticide. Wipe down your surfaces, clean the insides of your cabinets, and all of your baseboards with it.

Determine how they are entering your apartment and spray Raid for Ants in that area.