Those blasted ants!!!

[BilliGoatsGruff]

:help:
A couple months ago we moved out of town onto a 2 acre property. It's lovely and quiet, plus the light pollution is a lot less than where we lived before. There's one problem though- there are tiny black ants EVERYWHERE! It seems the only place thet haven't inhabited is our house. The kids can't play outside unless they're under the verandah and it's a struggle for me to do the washing without a bit of Irish dancing.
I've tried chemical warfare which just results in less ants for a couple days and major guilts on my part. Are there any family and eco friendly methods that actually work?

[FlashDrive]

:lol:

Try Ant Powder from Bunnings .... works every time for me.

Col....:)

[noeyedeer]

pour boiling water down their nest holes

[Greenswale]

Napalm!

[OzEclipse]

I had the small black sugar ants in my kitchen in LARGE numbers :help:about 10 years ago. I tried ant powder and other chemicals to no avail. Then I cut off their food supply. They were chasing sugar so I put a plastic tray on the benchtop half full of water. Into that went a smaller plastic tub and into that went anything they might want to eat. Eventually, everything they were interested i was in the tray surrounded by a water barrier. Beyond that, I let them go about their business. It took several weeks but eventually the ants went away. They've never come back. I imagine they paid down some sort of chemical signature to say, "don't bother, no food here."

Joe

[PCH]

So all she has to do is flood her yard, right?

[Atmos]

From memory (my high school chemistry teacher mentioned this); break fluid, polystyrene and laundary powdered soap... spray that around your back yard and they'll never return... just wear a lot of protective clothing when mixing haha

[FlashDrive]

Break Fluid ....:lol:

How about ' Brake Fluid ' ;)

[Weird1]

Try sprinkling salt around where the ants are, lived up the country a few years ago and the darned ants got everywhere especially in the kitchen cupboards, sprinkled salt onto the cupboard shelves and left it for a couple of days, the ants left and we were able to clear out the salt,in two years that I lived in that place the ants never came back.

Cheers keith

[guipago]

1st trick is to ID the ants, what are they? If the chemical warfare works then repeat it every couple days till they get the message, as for the guilts, it's them or you. Don't use salt outside it kills grass, old punishment for your enemies was to "salt the earth" so nothing grows, for the nests, boiling water works depending on how many nests there are, but a 50/50 mix of water & ammonia works really well. If they are that much of a drama you might have to say 3 hail Mary's & get the place nuc'ed, for the time being spray gumboots with surface spray to keep the bugger's off, green methods don't work well if you really want get rid off them. No easy solution.

[AussieTrooper]

Yep, ID the ants. If they are not native, you can wipe them out without 'the guilts'.
Might be worth trying to work out why they are there. Will you end up with a flying insect plague if they are gone.

Failing that, get an echidna.;)

[pmrid]

We regularly get ant invasions out here - a rural location. They frequently signal rain coming.
I've found two ways of dealing with them.
To keep them out of specific places, I sprinkle some cheap talcum powder which gets under their carapace or whatever it is and they basically snadpaper themselves to death.
That keeps them out of my car/caravan etc.
Then there's the AntRid - a small squeeze bottle. You squeeze a few drops across the trail the ants are using in your house. The ants come and eat it in droves, take it back home to momma and the next day they're gone, gone, gone.
Watch out for pets of course.
Peter

[leon]

Your in the Country Billi, :) ants are your neighbors, at least they are little ones, try outback OZ then you will know what ants are like. :eyepop:

Leon :thumbsup:

[Boozlefoot]

Borax. Now hard to get, but usually found in industrial cleaner aisle of your local hardware store. Usual chemical precautions, works like 40 mongrels!

[brian nordstrom]

:eyepop: You and me both Leon , its been calculated that there is on average 20 tons :eyepop::eyepop::eyepop: YES 20 TONS of ants per Sq kilometer in the NT , big buggers some up tp 20mm long that bite bad right down to the tiny <1mm Ginger ants that are attracted to the 60 Htz of our power supplies so get into anything electrical , switches , TV's , machinary etc , and kill them .

I use a combo of the 'Ant Rid ' and the 'Bayer Ant and Wasp Dust ' from Bunnings it's quite expensive but if you find their nest holes , and there are lots !!!! dust them and their trails , they also take it back to the nest on their feet and kill from the inside .
Some ants wont take 'Ant Rid' tho so just Nuke them !!!.

Takes time but you will get on top of them ,,, also don't feel the Guilt's !!!, they are only ants .

Brian. ,

[el_draco]

"break fluid" is code for a 12 year old scotch... and completely appropriate for this conversation :P:D

[el_draco]

...or, come to Tassie. We have two little delights, "Inchmen"; name says it all and its like being shot when one of those buggers bite.... and the "Jack jumper"; they swarm at you when you disturb a nest and their sting can be fatal.

I don't know which is worse overall but I got a Jack Jumper bite on a finger, and lost feeling to the elbow for a day... after the excruciating burning stopped that is. I leave them both alone until they get within 50m of home. Just two dangerous otherwise. My 16 y/o son got bitten by three Inchmen in one go and scored a trip to hospital :(

Echidnas love them both and there are a lot of Echidnas down here :lol:

[entity62]

Molten aluminum, fixes the little bliters, and make some cash on the way.

https://www.google.com.au/search?q=aluminium+poured+down+ant+ hole&espv=2&biw=1280&bih=890&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjh_pbwvN7RAhXMjJQKHQoIBD kQ_AUIBigB&dpr=1

Darrell

[BilliGoatsGruff]

I promise I'm a country bumpkin, through and through. One or two little ones would be ok, but when the ground under the clothesline is a moving black carpet something seriously needs to be done :shrug:

[pmrid]

Not that hard! Borax Decahydrate (104g/L) and Boron (11 g/L) are the active ingredients in AntRid (see my post below).
Peter

[BilliGoatsGruff]

Thanks for all the advice. I think I'm going to need a cuppa and some cake to get me through reading it all :lol:

@entity62
Darrell, if I could make money from this then I wouldn't complain too much. A sculpture like that would sell for quite a few $$$.

@el_draco
Tassie is actually on my list of places to visit. I'm guessing your "Inchmen" are the same, or at least similar to our inch ants. They're the kind that you can't kill unless you set them on fire. Sounds like your ants are a lot crankier than ours though. On a side note- 12 year old scotch might be better than a cuppa and cake to get me through all this typing!

@brian nordstrom
The guilts are more for all the other insects that get killed in the process. Perhaps the ginger ants are just trying to see how things are made? They might be the engineers of the ant world :lol:

@Boozlefoot
I found Borax in the cleaning aisle at Coles. Not sure what the price was but if it works then I'm sold.

@pmrid
Ant-Rid seems to be pretty popular. That might be the way to go.

@AussieTrooper
Yes please to an echidna! If you know where to get one then let me know too :D

@guipago
I thought the chemical warfare was helping, but lately it seems to have made things worse. They're work patterns are all over the place and there's no defined trail at all in some spots, just masses of ants running all over the place.
Is there any recommended way to get an ID? They're so small and fast that it's hard to get pictures. I don't know anyone who could do it for me either. Maybe next time one crawls up my leg I'll smack it instead of doing a full on squish.

@Weird1
Cinnamon also works well inside. All you have to do is find where they're coming in and sprinkle some across the entrance.

@atmos
Does the polystyrene dissolve with the break fluid? I know next to nothing about chemistry :lol:

@PCH
It's tempting! The water bill would be scary though :eyepop:

@Greenswale
Burning everything did cross my mind. The landlord wouldn't be very pleased though.

[leon]

Hope you find the solution Billi, I have to admit they the Ants can be a real pain in the Bum, so to speak.

Leon

[eddiedunlop]

Ignore all the improvised recommendations Billi. You will either be at risk of hurting yourself, causing harm to non-target species or wasting your time. Use a registered pesticide, one that is approved by the APVMA. A good place to start looking is the Pubcris website https://portal.apvma.gov.au/pubcris You can search the site for chemicals that are effective against all manner of pests including ants. Searching for ants will bring up hundreds of recommendations. Have a look at some of the product labels and find one that matches your situation.

[BilliGoatsGruff]

Thank you so much for this information. I didn't even know that website existed. It's going to make things a bit easier :)

[brian nordstrom]

:shrug: Yep , you could pay hundreds on an exterminator ( as Martin says ) but the chemicals they use are as indiscriminate as the off the shelf ant killers we can buy and probably more so , I would not worry about other species as with the amount of ants you are describing the other life forms would have been long ago eaten , ants are like bees in their nest structures , workers , soldiers , drones , queens etc .

On that the best time to start hunting the nests down is as the sun is going down , the last few workers are returning home where the army of solders is defending the nest and they are the ones that bite ( it sounds like you have a nest by the cloths line ? if you are getting bitten there as the soldiers don't stray far from the nest ) , its quite easy to find the nests but it just takes time , I actually like observing them and following them so I can nuke the nest , as the exterminators will do for a cost but its your money .

At home in NZ we have a real problem with the German wasps , huge dangerous nests under ground humans and dogs have fallen into them and died " Painfully !!! " ( they are just like ants ) and what we used to do is catch a wasp just on sunset and tie a 200mm length of cotton to it and let it go , and they always go straight to the nest , easy to follow and nuke it just on dark when the hive is full , take your time and find all nests and their multiple exits , I use posts in the ground as markers , just like the experts do , its a big job to do properly as one nuke wont do it , yes it will slow them down but they will be back, just like Arnie :lol: .

One more thing , my front lawn was like yours only 12 months ago ( its terrible , or what ? ) and its almost ant free now using the method I described , yes there are some but they are under control now and there is also many other species around now the ants have been sorted that were not there before , its all about balance

Enjoy .
Brian.

[BilliGoatsGruff]

I'm glad the German wasps aren't such a problem here. Ants on the ground are bad enough, but an insect eaxactly the same with wings? That's worse! It sounds like they're quite intelligent too.

[brian nordstrom]

:D in a 'Borg' kinda way , they are programmed for one job be it a worker , soldier , drone or queen ,

Resistance is futile ,,,,:lol:

Brian.

[BilliGoatsGruff]

I put some snack bars around the yard an hour ago and this is the result. On one lid there is honey, the other has peanut butter. It makes sense that they would go for the honey because they are always after the honeydew from the scale in the gum trees around our house.

I was thinking maybe bait would be useful, but with such a big area it would be hard to target them all.

[brian nordstrom]

:thumbsup: Leave them there until dusk and you will be able to follow the stragglers back to their nest(s) and mark them , do the same tomorrow at the other side of the lawn and the same for the next few days moving all over the area marking the nests every day .

You will know where all the nests are in a week or so , then its time for a NUKE or 10 , use the Bayer Ant and Wasp powder as much as it takes , its the best , just be systematic and once done you wont see ants in those numbers again and if they do start to explode again just repeat as necessary but it wont be as bad every time .

Be aware that some of the nests will be outside your fences , ants don't do boundries

Brian.

[Boozlefoot]

Peter said the keywords.....active ingredient.Getting harder to get as some regard it as a possible carcinogen and no longer stock it as a cleaning/laundry product. Better than AntRid because its CHEAPER by about 1800%! 1 kg will cost you about $6.00 and would make up LITRES of AntRid. Like buying Mould Killer when you can buy generic ammonia for 1/10 of the cost. Don't put AntRid in your washing machine.