It can be common to find one or two ants wandering along the floor or counter in your home, and you can quickly squish them with your shoe to get rid of them. But when your home becomes invaded with a swarm or line of ants, you will need to use more thorough methods to get rid of them in your home. Here are some insight and tips to help you rid your home of an ant problem.
Apply and Use Ant Repellents
Most of the single ants you may see in your home are scout ants that are sent out from the ant colony to search for food. Once they find a food source, they return to their nest and colony to come back into your home with hundreds or thousands of ants. By preventing the scout ants from finding their way into your home, you can help keep them from swarming in your home.
Use and apply one of several oils and scents along the floor or entry points where ants travel to prevent their sense of smell from working and directing them to a food source. Using these oils also disrupts an ant's scent trail.
Combine a mixture of water and several drops of peppermint, cinnamon, or lemon oil and spray or dab it with a saturated cotton ball onto entry points on the floor along a known ant trail. You can also apply white vinegar onto an ant's trail to disrupt their sense of smell and their navigation system. Ants do not like the scent that vinegar puts off and they will avoid the area.
Treat with Ant Insecticide Baits
You can also use some basic ingredients to create a bait to get rid of ants. When ants find a food source, they take it back to their colony where other ants eat it and kill the colony.
You can make up a bait by combining equal amounts of borax and fruit jelly. Smear some of this mixture on a paper plate or onto a small section of cardboard and place it in an area that the ants travel. They will take the borax mixture back to the other ants. When ants eat the borax, they will die.
If you don't have jelly, you can mix borax with some sugar, then add water to the mixture until it makes a syrup consistency. Place this onto a piece of cardboard or paper plate near where ants are a problem.
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