Getting Rid Of Ants - The Battle Is Back On

A little over a year ago, our house was invaded by ants. They came, they saw, they stayed for a while (despite my best efforts), then after about 4 months they left.

By the time they left, we'd been nearly driven to distraction. I'd even gone so far as to create this website. But then they left so we relaxed (and as you may have noticed, I stopped writing here).

The Ants Are Back

A couple of months ago, almost a year to the day of their first appearance, the ants came back.

I am now entirely convinced that food is NOT the primary motivation for these ants - it's shelter. We live in a sub tropical area and it rains a lot at this time of year. I guess having their nests flooded every day would leave the average ant looking for drier accommodation - and what more could they want than a house?

Another Ant Invasion

We first noticed the ants were back when they invaded our en-suite bathroom. They massed in all 4 corners of the ceiling. I estimate that there were about 800 ants in the room.

The only thing for it was to bring out the insect killer spray (I normally call it fly spray). It's great for killing ants, but I don't like to use it unless we really have to, as we have young children and I'm sure it can be harmful to them - I'm worried about the health implications.

The Ants Send Out Scouts

After the first major invasion, we went through a period of several weeks where the ants didn't mass inside the house. They were coming into the house, but they were staying in the walls.

They then started to send out scouts. In any room in the house you'd find between 1 and 5 ants, travelling by themselves. In one day I killed about 100 ants, never more than 2 of them together. They were obviously working out where the ant swarm were going to move next.

My philosophy is to kill as many ant scouts as I can - I figure that if no message gets back to Ant HQ, they'll assume that something went wrong for those scouts and they won't move the rest of the ant colony into my bathroom (or whichever room they're in).

Ant Highways

The ants have several highways into the house. They come streaming into the house - by my calculations, there are more than 1000 ants coming into our house per hour, per highway. There are ants coming out as well, but it's obvious that they've created an ant nest within our walls.

There seems to be no way to permanently eradicate their highways.

When I block / destroy one highway, they re-establish it within a day or so, normally by just taking a slightly different route (another tiny hole in the mortar, a different pole up to the roof). In some cases, they just keep right on going on the same route, after a day or so to count their losses.

Yes, I use Outdoor Surface Spray, that claims to be professional grade, and the ants are back crawling over it within a couple of days! They even lift their bottoms up, presumably so they have less contact with the poison. It's amazing!

And yes, I've had a professional pest control company spray the house, paying special attention to the major highway entry points.

Final Thoughts

It's an ongoing battle and one that I'll write more about in future. I WILL beat these ants eventually - or at least I can be confident that they'll leave again at some point in the future, just as they did last time. Or maybe they'll get me in the end. Wish me luck!

Not Getting Rid Of Ants - Something That Doesn't Work

Welcome to Getting Rid Of Ants. Perhaps oddly, I'm going to start with something that doesn't work when you are trying to get rid of ants.

One solution, which I've seen suggested on several sites on the Internet, suggests that you can get rid of ants by using silicon to seal up all the cracks in the wall, thereby denying the ants entry to the house.

Doesn't work!

I don't believe there are any houses that are possible to seal 100% completely and ants will always find a way in.

If there is just one gap somewhere, the ant scouting parties will find it and make their way in (should they wish to do so - that's a better place to start).

Ants are highly organized. They send out scouting parties and map out routes, before establishing a highway. When they are in this phase, you can see single ants out scouting territory. Once you see this, it's only a matter of days before they establish a highway.

What do you do when you see ant scouts? I'm always a little conflicted. Sometimes I wait until they establish a highway, then kill all of the ants in one go. Other times I kill the ants scouts before they establish the highway.

They'll still establish it at some point but maybe I can keep them in a state of confusion for several days. Maybe they'll give up and go away! Hopefully there'll be an ant scout that returns to HQ with information on a lovely place to live out in the garden, far from that crazy man who tries to kill any ants he sees.

I sound like I'm talking about humans, don't I? Sometimes that's what it seems you're up against. Ants are very intelligent!

How do ants find their way in?

Well, if you have a brick house such as mine, they'll find small holes in the mortar and get into the walls. There are hundreds of such holes for them to chose from. There's no way to block them all.

You can try to create a barrier around the base of your house, either using outdoor surface spray or calling a professional pest control company, but at least in my case this had limited effectiveness.

The professional pest control company got rid of the ants for two weeks, then the ants were back. With the outdoor surface, it only buys me a day or two, before the ants are crawling back over the top of it, onto the walls and finding those small cracks again.

If your house is made of a surface other than brick, you may have more luck with the barrier spray. The pest control guy told me that the pesticide actually soaks into the brick. However, even with other surfaces, ants will find small gaps in the barrier or work out how to cross it (mine seem to hold their bottoms up so they have limited contact with the sprayed area - these are common black ants). Or maybe not so common!

Anyway, the ants don't have much trouble getting into the walls if they want to. Once they're there, the ants can get up into the ceiling and traverse the length of the house. They can come down wherever they want to.

Once again, it's just not possible to seal all the gaps leading into the ceiling. There will be air vent, light fittings which are flush, ceiling fans, etc. The ants will find a way through!

I'm not saying that you shouldn't fill up any gaps where the ants have established a highway, but don't expect this to solve your ant problem. Getting rid of ants is not so easy - they'll just find another way in.

Getting Rid Of Ants - Introduction

Welcome to Getting Rid Of Ants.

These days there are blogs on pretty much any topic you can think of, but I'm sure some people are asking why create one on getting rid of ants?

First, I have an ant problem. I cannot get rid of the ants no matter what I try - but I'm continuing the battle.

I'm not alone. Many people have a problem with ants and are looking for a solution. They're asking themselves "how do I get rid of ants". So how do they answer this question?

Some of them call their local pest control company. Some of them simply take up the surface spray and get to it. Others search for answers online. It's these people I'm targeting.

There are many websites out there that have advice on getting rid of ants. I know, I've tried some of that advice, with little success. I thought it would be worth documenting what I've tried and whether it works or not.

I won't be providing a list of things guaranteed to get rid of ants - no such list exists.

I will be providing details about what I've tried and what the results were. Hopefully, other people with an ant problem will be able to use this to help them formulate their own plan for getting rid of ants.

So welcome to Getting Rid Of Ants. If you have an ant problem, this is the right place for you. I hope my experience with trying to get rid of ants helps you.