Answer:
There are sites all over the internet advising on what to do about ants. Most of the information appears to be people repeating other people's anecdotes, with little hard evidence. We don't know the answers, either, but we're struggling mightily to get rid of the ants in (at least) one of our walls, and haven't succeeded yet.
Last year, we went through a similar experience. We were able to find a hole in the outside wall through which a continuous stream of ants were coming and going. Diatomaceous earth stopped the ants quickly and permanently.
This year, we can hear ants in the wall, and if we leave stinky garbage under the sink in the kitchen, ants start to arrive, moving in from the wall, along the drain pipe from the sink.
We went through the same exercise we did last year, looking for information on the internet, and came up with the same recipes for ways to deal with them. With no external traffic that we can find, our options are limited. And able to generate visible internal traffic only by letting the garbage get rank, and not wanting to attract the ants into the kitchen anyway, our options are even more limited.
First, though, we identified the ants as best we could. Using this site (http://www.pestcontrolcanada.com/) it appears very likely that we've got carpenter ants. Unfortunately, the helpful site is for a commercial pest control firm, and we'd like to avoid the expense and the chemicals, if possible.
So I poked a small hole in the wall where we're pretty sure ants are living. (Sounds like crinkling cellophane). And at the opening to the hole, I put down a box with four different recipes taken from the internet:
- the commercial Ant-B-Gon in a tin (Borax and peanut butter, I think)
- Borax and granulated sugar
- Borax and peanut butter
- Borax and cat food.
The little buggers love the cat food, and are ignoring everything else. See the evidence here: http:/sqwalk.comimagesAnts.jpg
Now, the questions are - and I've found nothing persuasive on the internet yet:
1. Is the Borax mix (15-20%) enough to kill these ants?
2. If they do get back to the nest or the colony, does the Borax affect the other ants there?
Any helpful information is welcome. Thank-you.
---Update, a few days later---
On day two we replaced the assortment of four potential baits poisoned with Borax, with three trays of cat food - the only one the ants were interested in. In a matter of less than an hour, every tray was surrounded by ants, all feasting on the stuff.
By day four, the number of ants was considerably reduced. Since then, nothing. Tried replacing the bait with fresh stinky cat food, and still no ants.
And no apparent noise in the wall, either.
So either they've put out the pheromone signs that say "keep quiet", "don't go there", "don't eat this stuff". Or the cat food - Borax mix actually worked, the ants
Don't want to get too optimistic, but this may actually have worked, and the answers to questions 1 and 2 are yes and yes.
---
I don't even use the Borax mixed with anything and I have had ants lots of times. Just sprinkle some where they are likely to be.... like along baseboards... In a week. No ants.
-----------
It's very likely that the borax mixture killed the queen ant. Ants have a 'personal' stomach and a 'community' stomach - the 'community' stomach is used to carry food home to feed the queen (yes, the queen ant lives on the barf of the workers.) When she dies, the rest simply die of "ant old age," so to speak.
I've also seen Terro® Ant Killer used on those little brown ants; it kills the
whole nest in a matter of days by the same mechanism. I don't get a kickback from the Terro® folks, this is just an endorsement by a satisfied customer. In
fact, the active ingredient is boric acid (I just looked it up), which is just a variation on borax.
For carpenter ants, I'd think that some very fine sawdust mixed in with the borax would do it, and for "grease-eating" ants, just mix the borax with some bacon grease or lard.
