ant infestation,my cousin lives in the country an has a very clean house,she is very atimate of being clean?

Question

you could eat off her floors,but here is the problem,for 8 years she has had a bad case of sugur ants,we beleive thats what it is,there small and look like there rear ends are turned up,she has tried everything thats not harmful to her health to get ride of these darn things,she has sprayed out side inside and still no avail the only time these ants are prevalant are in the spring and summer, she makes sure that no one leaves any thing food or beverage wise laying out and around,please help,im researching all i can,on this,we dont know where there comeing from and most of the infestations of ants are in her shower and in her kitchen ,which the kitchen is on the other side of the bathrom wall, and the house was built over 200 hundred years ago and she is fixing it up ,so any way please any one any ideas

Answer 1

I have had the same problem and it has driven me mad for years!! I was never able to find a trail or any sign of access anywhere...sound familiar?
Well, just yesterday I started removing the flooring in the kitchen to replace it and I found a huge crack underneath in the cement foundation, so, I have now torn off a cabinet from the wall in search of the end of this crack and found a huge pile of dirt which the little darlings have been moving to gain access...mystery solved on how they have been getting in, I will now seal the crack, (I'm using a cement caulk) and continue with my kitchen project which is getting bigger and bigger!

Could this be a possibility? Hope it helps...GL!

Answer 2

We, too, live in the country and are constantly battling ants, the little black ones that smell like chemicals (to me anyway) when crushed, some say they smell like rotten cocanuts. Anyway, this year they are really bad, probably due to the fire we had that burned up most of the hills around us. So they are coming in looking for food and shelter. The only things I have found that works are the black ant traps (sorry I don't remember the name) that I bought at the hardware store and my own recipe of honey, sugar, water and borax (they also sell boric acid, in a more pure form at hardware stores for a couple of bucks). I had to work with my recipe because I couldn't find a real good one on the internet. I just put in a cup of water, a cup of sugar, about a half cup of honey and about 3 tablespoons borax. The trick is not to kill them immediately, you want the little buggers to take the "treat" back to the nest and feed it to everyone including the Queen so everyone in the nest dies. The first time I put the concoction out, the ants were dying too soon, so I had to add a little more water and sugar. But, better than that, I put the mixture outside where I saw them entering our house and they haven't been back inside yet, (knock on wood).

If you are going to mix this yourself, it would be wise to put the poison in a container that nothing else can get into: kids, pets or wildlife. I had to hide mine even better because I saw a lizard eating the ants that had gathered around the jar.

Answer 3

They're there for the water. Ant baits are usually effective for sugar ants. Spraying only kills the ants that actually get sprayed; so if the nest is intact, she will just have more ants in the house.

Answer 4

She just has to spray the whole house (and find something to do for 1 hour or so) and on the outside, she can put some ant poison!