OOT please help me, ants are taking over my kitchen!

[Meech]

I live in southern michigan as well, our previous house had a bad ant problem. The house was older and not sealed up real good.

The wife cannot frickin stand bugs, so a little ring of Diazanon (sp?) around the house took care of the problem. Not very good for pets or kids tho'.

[TwoOuter]

They're available at Home Depot, Lowes, Ace Hardware, etc. Pet safe-- not sure. I'm sure there's some poison involved here.

The sprays work fine to get rid of the ones you can spray. They do little to prevent their return though.

http://www.amazon.com/Grants-Ant-Sta.../dp/B000AYG03C

[TheDudeAbides]

Do you have rotted trees or other wood outside the house? Sounds like you've got a carpenter ant nest. You NEED to get them professionally treated (sprays and traps) or they'll just multiply until your house is infested with them. Trust me on this.

Do they look like this?



And are there any with wings (means they're mating).

[Annulus]

no, they don't look like that. they are all very small and tiny. no wings.

and no we dont have any wood outside. i dunno whats the deal with the wood floors, my mom prolly has no idea. but the ants are [censored] pissing me off.

and thanks for the link twoouter.

[Annulus]

i guess they are called 'pavement ants'.

i called a pest control place and they are charging $129 for the treatment. and then $78/month for the next 3 months for follow ups. they say this will take care of it. what do you guys think? do any home remedies work?

[TheDudeAbides]

You should get a company that guarantees their work for a year, or at least six months.

[punkass]

geez, those ants are huge.

[CrashPat]

I had some of these in my kitchen last year, I just put out 4 raid ant bait things http://www.killsbugsdead.com/icp_ant.asp like the 3rd or 4th on that page and I haven't had any problems since.. I think they cost me 5 bucks or something like that at walmart.

[bav]

I had an ant problem a couple times, and I could NOT find where the suckers were coming from. Very small ants, and only in the hundreds, not tens of thousands, but still annoying. I hunted EVERYWHERE for the source. Eventually called the professionals who did exactly what I did and came to the same conclusion I came to ("Man--all the caulk is good, all the windows are tight--I just don't see how they're getting in"). The guy just gave up finding the source and went to town spraying outside (I wouldn't let him do more than a couple spritzes in the kitchen in areas like under the sink and between the dishwasher and the counters--I have no real desire to consume Orkin pesticides). It worked.

So 4mo later the ants came back. This time I just snagged a can of Raid Ant and Roach Killer (which has residual activity good for 30 days, or some such) and spritzed around the outside of the house near the kitchen at all the pipes, window edges, seams, whatever. And poof--the ants were gone. $1 of canned spray instead of a $30 call to Orkin.

[samjjones]

I for one welcome our new ant overlords.