Now is the start to get rid of sugar ants! How? This is a cheap way doing.I start this time of the year, lay out your garden hoses where you have problems, like figs, fruit trees. Leave hose end open, a little honey or other attractant. Watch for traffic, wait a few weeks,no rush, attach shutoff valve, turn water on, leave on for a couple of days, drain in a bucket, see how many you catch, plus eggs.
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I put out poison, if you can get them early in the year before they build up their numbers they are easier to wipe out.
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Sugar ants in the house, I am the new pro!
Buy TERRO, little bottles of clear liquid come with squares of paper that split apart. Put the liquid on the paper, (its sweet Borax). A killer for any ant. They will die! Leave a track of odor to the nest, track it right in an kill them all. I’ve have the little squares in my kitchen for three days now (had huge nests). Almost all gone. It might be worth a try out doors as well. Just when it is dry with no rain.
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I’m having a bad ant problem in my kitchen but strangely, my ants prefer meat!!! Any tiny morsel of meat will bring them in large numbers, while my sugar bowl sits undisturbed. They are the little tiny ants, but I hadn’t seen them go after meat like these do! Strange.
I’ve tried just sprinkling powdered Borax but I’ve been doing that for a week in pretty substantial amounts, but it seems to have had no effect. I’m absolutely going to try @mrsg47 ’ s Terro recommendation if I can find some in my area.
Make a soft paste with Borax, sugar or honey and water.
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If they are going for meat,
Feed them meat,
Try making little nickel size raw hamburger patties ,
With just a little borax ( the special sauce ) in between .
Press together
Stack 3 or so layers up in a bottle cap. The top should not have borax. So that they will not hesitate to start feeding.
In a day or two they will be down into the borax ,taking it home to feed their brood.
In 3-4 days they usually realize there is a problem and stop feeding on that one.
Make another one with a different flavor at that point and put in a different location.
As danzeb said above sugar mix works too.
Some times they like sweet… Sometimes meat…
As borax is so cheep, I see no point in buying comercial products, it’s a matter of mixing borax in with their favorite food. In “very small amounts”, to much and they won’t eat it.
It’s worth it. I had three big/huge nests under my kitchen. They take the liquid borax back to the nest and they really die. For a very large nest it might take up to a week to kill them. I just leave them out hidden all summer and the problem is now gone!!! I just hate ants!
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I can vouch for the Terro liquid bait traps (I had sugar ants). We just moved into a fixer upper… a filthy fixer upper with a terrible ant problem. I put those liquid Terro bait stations out all over and it took a few hatches, but I think I have a handle on them. It drove me crazy to have to watch them travelling back and forth to the stations, but it had to go back to the nest(s).
I tried the nematodes in the yard (SC/SF type), they were terrible out there too, and I have to say I think it is working! I haven’t seen hardly any new ant hills, and I put it out a week or so ago. The nematodes supposedly work on a lot of other pests too if you time them right. I was a bit skeptical, but was trying to keep the yard “clean” for our family and pets.
Terro makes a version that works on both sugar and grease ants, like yours