ants all over stove?

Question

I have ant problems in my kitchen. I am the most anal when it comes to keeping my kitchen cleaned.

I went to get my 2 year old lunch and they were swarming the stove. Funny thing is that there were no where else just the stove, not the floors, counters or anywhere but the stove.

I have no ideas where they are coming from. I spray'd them and cleaned it up. Went to the store came back and I found 4 more crawling around. ANy ideas.

Answer 1

Boy, do I feel your pain. I never had to deal with ants -inside- the house until I moved to my current region.

Sometimes it seems there's no human rhyme or reason for what will bring them. They sure can mount up an army in a hurry though. I came home to my girlfriend's house one day to find a huge line from the cabinet to the trash and back.

It looked like a giant conveyor belt moving in a circle. I really don't like insects, and it's completely unnerving to me to find them invading my home. Especially by the thousands.

What I found, overall was that it was better to bait for the kill rather than spray and clean. it's frustrating to keep watching them, but a couple of hours with good bait, and they die in droves.

Also, there are lots of "green" methods listed (herbs and powders) for barrier deterrent, but this will not kill them. It just keeps them moving and looking for another ingress. You want them eating what and where you decide, and you can control that with good bait.

First step - Follow the ants. Don't panic, and don't clean them up until you can see where they're going. If you muck up their path, they'll scatter, and you won't learn a thing.

There's an entry point somewhere that they're able to come right in and out of. You need to find it so you can distract and bait trap there, rather than where they are congregating (stove). And you don't want them dragging all the way across the room to get to your bait. You want it as near to where they come in as you can find.

Second - you need to have something ready that's more interesting to them than what they were after at the stove.

This means sweet stuff. In my area, there are two major brands, both good, for baiting ants. One is Grant's (Grant's kills ants, it all says). The other is Terro. Both make little plastic modules with liquid bait. They're quite novel. You just snip off the front so that it makes a ramp up from the floor into the tray, and lay flat near a trail.

If you put it an inch or two from a trail of ants, they will slowly start peeling off from the march and heading into it for a bite.

It's made from a simple mix of sugar syrup and boric acid. Nothing harmful about boric acid in the house, and certainly not in these small doses.

Now I've read articles that people can make their own with a little sugar or corn syrup and Borox [the old mule team borox in the cardboard soap box] (which contains the Boric Acid you need)

Please don't get just one or two pieces of bait. Get 6 or 12 and put them along the walls, at windows, in every corner of the kitchen. Obviously placing them closer to where they disappear off the floor will be best, but once the major problem is gone, keeping traps out assures that any stray scouts will also meet their destiny in short order.

The primary reason you want several baits is that if you have a huge amount of ants, the first couple of trays will clog up with corpses and the trail will keep moving instead of stopping in.

They don't usually die immediately. They often go in, eat some, and die outside the bait tray on the floor.

You can tell when the traps are spent because the liquid inside will be gone.

If you find where the ants are outside, you can also mark a few spots with ant 'stakes' which have a more solid form of the poison bait attached to a small plastic spike. Just pop them in the ground where you find mounds or trails and they'll eat it up with the same effect.

There are also dry "nuggety" looking baits that you can sprinkle if the weather's right, or in a garage area where babies and pets won't be licking at the floor.

I used a combination of those three methods, along with some spraying into the walls behind power sockets and light switches (removed covers and found ants in walls! eek!) with great success.

Answer 2

Immediate action: Spray the little buggers with 409, Fantastik, or some other bleachy cleaner. Then wipe up their dead carcasses with a paper towel. Long-term action: Get some little ant traps. They actually work but you'll have to get the more expensive RAID or other brand-name ones to be sure (they're still only about $4 for 4 traps). Super Infestation: Call an exterminator if the traps and home remedies don't work.

Answer 3

sounds like there grease eating ants,
[there's different kinds]
try boric acid powder,
[kills ants fleas,roaches,and silver fish,] lightly sprinkle it under the burners,
[raise the elements ] if its an elect stove,
if it,s a gas stove, just scrub the burner area, and raise the top and clean under it,