How to stop ants

How to stop ants from coming into your home.

Ants are continually searching for food and water sources. They literally surround your home in nature living in a subterranean protected environment sending out soldiers and scouts to find food. Homes are often built on ant nests unknowingly and a queen can fly into a vent and nest under your home. But the most common way for a ant to get under your house is through a crack in the foundation.

This crack is more than adequate for an ant army to move into your home. The way to prevent this usually is not to try and repair the foundation. Repairs in this kind of cement always seem to pull apart or separate slightly which is all the ant needs to get through.

Your only real line of defense is to spray the foundation with a product labeled to kill ants and for use on a house foundation.

Many of the spider barrier products can help in that ants will not want to cross that barrier. They sense the chemical and do not want to get infected and return that infection back to the nest. This is only partially effective though as I have witnessed over the past twenty years in the business. About ten percent of the ants will still try to get through. This means you need a powerful enough insecticide to kill that ant as he tries to enter.

Most home defense type products break down very quickly in full sun light. So you will have to re-spray a crack like this every few weeks to insure the chemical is active and will stop them.

Once under the house, baits really are the only option that will wipe out the colony. Granular baits will often have a label that will allow this. It depends on the house and what access is under the house but this is the way to stop ants.

Ants in Bathroom

Why are there ants in my bathroom?

Why do ants end up in the bathroom where there is no food source?

The answer is water. This is true with spiders, cockroaches, earwigs and other insects. They still need water to survive.

The next reason we discussed earlier, the great insect highway system running through your home called the plumbing system. They were attracted to moisture as your pipes "sweat" and that will sustain them on long journeys as they forage for food.

Once in your bathroom, they often fall into the sink or tub and can not get out due to the slickness of the porcelain or tile.

How do you get rid of them? Well the bathroom is not the best place to be spraying because you will be walking around in it barefoot. A crack and crevice spray may be okay if the label states that, but again, it can't be where water will conduct it into the tub or sink where you may come in contact with it.

The traps we discussed can be used but again they need to be fresh. Another option is a ant gel that can stick up under the sink where you and your pets can not come in contact with it. This gel is another ant bait that they will take back to the nest.

Caulking the area around the pipes will help but you will see trails of ants often coming into the bathroom. This is because the moisture is attracting them. In nature moisture will bring in other insects and plant debris that ants will use as food. So if they sense moisture it is like the lion going to the watering hole to find out if there is any prey. Keeping the bathroom as dry as possible will help.

Again, remember the bathroom is a sensitive area to do any kind of spray or even bait, so always carefully read the label and follow the directions.

Ant Baits Do Not Work

As a professional licensed exterminator, I often get the call to eliminate ants in a home or business. When I get there I will see these little "Ant Hotels" and the customer will say, "we tried these but they don't seem to work."

Ants will be walking right on by the bait station ignoring it.

The problem is the freshness of the bait. Ants are amazingly intelligent, and especially sensitive to taking anything back to the colony that could hurt it.

When I store my bait in the same location as my pesticide, they will not take the bait. The ants are so sensitive that if there is any sense of a chemical that is not right associated with that bait station, they pass.

So grocery stores and box stores will put pesticide and bait right in the same isle along with herbicides like 2,4-d which we smell when we walk into the isle. If we can smell it, then it has definitely effected the ant hotel. I know that seems hard to believe, but it is the truth.

If you buy a spider barrier product and spray the ants first, then put in the hotels, again, they will not work. If you purchase a bait that has been on the shelf for two years, the effectiveness is greatly reduced.

My bait smells so sweet it's almost sickly sweet when it comes out of the container. The ants pick it up almost as quickly as it hits the ground. That is what you should be seeing.

It takes fresh bait, and fresh bait is very effective. So do not purchase Ant Bait from a store that has it in the same area as the pesticides and herbicides. Your best bet is to purchase it from an online direct wholesaler that only deals in bait and has product that was recently manufactured.

When using Ant Bait Granular, more is not better. For some reason pouring out a pile will actually turn them off from the bait. Small scattered amounts spread out over their foraging route works best.
Always follow label instructions.

As a way to stop ants, baits actually are the best, but it takes time. You have to be patient and allow the ants to still scurry about your kitchen or bathroom area as they work on taking the bait back to the nest. Then you need to wait a few days for the nest to be fed and for the chemical to take effect. If you don't have that patience, you are back to spraying. But when you spray you are only killing a few foragers and scouts, not the main nest. Which means with the next hatchlings you'll have ants again.

So the best thing to do is bait and be patient for it to work. So long as you know your bait is good.

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How Ants get into your Home

Welcome to the Ant Freeway network 101

Ants will take the path of least resistance when foraging for food and water sources. In nature this may be a tree limb giving them fast access over the jungle they live in called our lawn. But then they encounter an amazing straight road paved like a freeway and slightly moist providing water.

This straight freeway leads them into a structure with a network of highways leading to amazing food and water and protection from predators, called, your home.

The pipes within your house are perfectly suited for their travel needs. They run on the straightest course, are easy to hang onto and have few if any predators guarding them.

The access point usually is a garden hose that we conveniently ran out to their location in the yard and might as well have put up a sign saying, come on in.

This is how ants get into your home. The scouts go back to the main colony and this hose becomes a main freeway running both directions, in and out of your house.

This is why you see ants in your bathroom but not in the hallway. Ants need moisture, and at the end of every freeway ramp they find a water source. Just couldn't be better.

So how do we interrupt this convenience? Caulk around your hose bibs and around all the pipe that runs through a wall in your house. This will help and will also slow down mice, cockroaches and spiders that have been enjoying the same paths.

The next thing is to use a ant repellent spray or even a spider barrier product with ants on the label and coat the pipe right where the ant would come in on the pipes.

You may still have ants. This is because you didn't do the preventive early enough and now a queen followed the highway and set up a colony within the house. This is going to take a fresh bait (not store bought) that the foragers will take back to the queen and larvae which will wipe out the colony.

Ants will use limbs touching the top of your roof, the wiring inside your house, cracks in the foundation so always be on the lookout for ways they may be using to access your home.