Low toxicity poison for Argentine ants
Feb 01 '05 (Updated Feb 04 '05)
The Bottom Line Identify the type of ant, determine its food preference, and then seek an appropriate poison of minimal toxicity to unintended targets.
Finding an ant control solution has for me been a process of research and trial-and-error.
I live in Northern California and have had problems with infestations of the ubiquitous little Argentine ants for decades. This seems to be the primary type of ant in this region, at least on the San Francisco Peninsula, having evidently forced others out decades ago. They are widespread throughout the warmer regions of this country. They love sweet things in particular, and will tend harmful aphids on citrus trees (carrying them from leaf to leaf to spread the infestation) because the aphids produce a sweet substance that the ants like to eat.
It is important to know the type of ant you are dealing with since they vary in food (and hence bait) preference. Do a Google search on "ant identification" to find sites that tell you how to distinguish the various species and what their preferred foods are, if you are not certain. There are several good sites at the top of the search results list.
Sprays of almost any kind will kill the Argentine ants immediately. Naturally the strong chemical sprays such as Raid are very effective, but may also be effective at poisoning your lungs or food (in the kitchen). Try instead a soap or detergent solution, or Windex.
However, if you kill the ants at the feeding source, they still have literally millions of reserve troops between your house and the nest for future invasions. Block one entrance and they'll find another one. The only real solution is to kill the larvae and queens (multiple breeding queens per nest in the case of Argentine ants), not just the workers.
Nothing I tried was ever effective for long-term Argentine ant control. The solid baits such as grease in a tin stake or bait in a little round plastic container were a waste of time and money. I saw no effect on ant populations inside or outside around my orange trees with those items I bought at the local hardware store. One or another of them may work with other types of ants, but in my experience they fail miserably with the little Argentine ants.
Years ago I read about mixing boric acid in a sweet solution (such as diluted honey) and tried making it myself but was defeated by the problem of the container. (How do you make it easily available to the pests on a protracted basis, but prevent spilling, rapid evaporation, or access to pets and birds, etc?) I note that a couple other writers in this section have had good luck with boric acid bait.
There are a couple web pages devoted to this type of homemade solution: search on "ant control boric acid" at Yahoo or Google. If you need to control large areas such as a farm or orchard, making bait yourself may be the most cost-effective method.
Boric acid is a very desirable ant poison since it is inexpensive and a 1-5% solution is not going to harm birds or pets or children if they get into the bait intended for insects.
Recently my apartment was invaded by scouts from a huge stream of Argentine ants outside my window. This time I found and bought Terro Liquid Ant Baits at my local Ace Hardware. I recall there was another boric-acid-based product on the shelves but it came in a bottle, which requires me to construct the poison-delivery mechanism myself. I chose Terro since it came packaged in little sealed trays.
I cut holes in a couple trays and placed them on the window sill. The critters soon located the food -- a syrup laced with 5% borax -- and started sucking it up and taking it back to their queens and larvae. Some like it so much they stay drinking at the source and die happy or drown in the juice.
After about a week (there were a couple rainy days where the pests stayed home), the stream is now down to a trickle of a few scouts exploring the area. It appears that this product is working, since at this moment there are three or four ants on my window sill at any one time, whereas last week when I first noticed them, there was a two-way trail of a few hundred, bumper to bumper.
The Terro company writes on their website that it can take two weeks to rid your house of this pest, and that Argentine ants are the hardest type to control. They are surely not gone forever since ants from other nests will eventually fill the gap, but I think I have finally found a viable, cheap and innocuous solution that I am happy to recommend to others.
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