- Joined
- Jun 21, 2014
- Messages
- 15
need help I have a lot of black ants in my backyard. How do I get rid of them? My sulcata lives in my backyard, she has the whole yard for her. They are all over in the grass and dirt.
Ants
- Thread starter Toni W.
- Start date
Several Home-made Ant Remedies
1 – Boric Acid
Ingredients:
1 Tablespoon of Boric Acid, 1 tsp of Sugar, 4 oz water, Cotton Balls.
Mix Boric Acid and Sugar in a bowl. This can be poured over a cotton wad in a small dish or bottle cap. Keep this from drying out for continued effectiveness. Place Cotton balls in path of Ants. If the ants are drawn to sugar, if you make a solution of boric acid and sugar, not too much boric acid initially, the ants will eat it up take it to their young and feed it to them. This method will kill the entire nest in about two weeks. The solution should initially be weak because you don't want them to taste the boric acid and you don't want to kill the ants before they feed the rest of the nest. If they are protein eating ants mix the boric acid in broth.
2 – Another Boric Acid
>> 1 teaspoon boric acid (available at any drug store,, $2.99 for 4 oz) 6 tablespoons sugar
>> 2 cups water
>> mix together in a jar till all dissolved,, label and store safely.
>>Soak a few cotton balls with it, then put them in a small, covered plastic >container (margarine or <?>) with a few small openings in it for the ants to >get in, (I also put a brick on top so other curious creatures could not get >in)and then freshen it 1-2 times a week.
>> This is a slow acting 1 percent solution to get them to take some back to
>> the nest and even feed the queen :>
>>after a few weeks changing to a 1/2 percent solution should keep them gone.
3 - bacon grease
....in a margarine tub which is sunk into the ground level. The ants here can smell animal fat from what seems like a mile away...Around the outside of the margarine tub I place a big circle of boric acid...and cover it with a rock. The ants have to walk through the boric acid to get to the bacon grease, then back through it on the way out. If they get back to the nest carrying it on their legs, it kills whatever it comes into contact with. We have 4or 5 species of ants here...two of which are lethal!
4 - Found this in Jerry Bakers stuff
Ant Ambrosia
4-5 tbsp. of cornmeal
3 tbsp. of bacon grease
3 tbsp. of baking powder
3 packages of baker's yeast
Mix the cornmeal and bacon grease into a paste, then add the baking powder and yeast. Dab the gooey mix on the sides of jar lids, and set them near the anthills. The pesky critters will love it to death!!""
5 - If you can't find Everclear, liquefy orange peels and pour it around the ant hills. You may get fruit flies, but you won't have any trouble with ants!
6 - I have a friend that put a circle of diatomaceous earth around her aviaries and
effectively kept the ants out that way. She also uses it to directly attack any hills in the area.
7 - I believe that the "new age chalk" is a combination of diatomaceous earth and boric acid. Boric acid is the major component in "Roach Proof" and is a fairly benign and very effective means of insect control.
8 - Amdro is another effective treatment, but it is an actual poison, but safer than others. Both Amdro and Logic are baits that the ants pick up and take into the mound so that the queen eats it.
1 – Boric Acid
Ingredients:
1 Tablespoon of Boric Acid, 1 tsp of Sugar, 4 oz water, Cotton Balls.
Mix Boric Acid and Sugar in a bowl. This can be poured over a cotton wad in a small dish or bottle cap. Keep this from drying out for continued effectiveness. Place Cotton balls in path of Ants. If the ants are drawn to sugar, if you make a solution of boric acid and sugar, not too much boric acid initially, the ants will eat it up take it to their young and feed it to them. This method will kill the entire nest in about two weeks. The solution should initially be weak because you don't want them to taste the boric acid and you don't want to kill the ants before they feed the rest of the nest. If they are protein eating ants mix the boric acid in broth.
2 – Another Boric Acid
>> 1 teaspoon boric acid (available at any drug store,, $2.99 for 4 oz) 6 tablespoons sugar
>> 2 cups water
>> mix together in a jar till all dissolved,, label and store safely.
>>Soak a few cotton balls with it, then put them in a small, covered plastic >container (margarine or <?>) with a few small openings in it for the ants to >get in, (I also put a brick on top so other curious creatures could not get >in)and then freshen it 1-2 times a week.
>> This is a slow acting 1 percent solution to get them to take some back to
>> the nest and even feed the queen :>
>>after a few weeks changing to a 1/2 percent solution should keep them gone.
3 - bacon grease
....in a margarine tub which is sunk into the ground level. The ants here can smell animal fat from what seems like a mile away...Around the outside of the margarine tub I place a big circle of boric acid...and cover it with a rock. The ants have to walk through the boric acid to get to the bacon grease, then back through it on the way out. If they get back to the nest carrying it on their legs, it kills whatever it comes into contact with. We have 4or 5 species of ants here...two of which are lethal!
4 - Found this in Jerry Bakers stuff
Ant Ambrosia
4-5 tbsp. of cornmeal
3 tbsp. of bacon grease
3 tbsp. of baking powder
3 packages of baker's yeast
Mix the cornmeal and bacon grease into a paste, then add the baking powder and yeast. Dab the gooey mix on the sides of jar lids, and set them near the anthills. The pesky critters will love it to death!!""
5 - If you can't find Everclear, liquefy orange peels and pour it around the ant hills. You may get fruit flies, but you won't have any trouble with ants!
6 - I have a friend that put a circle of diatomaceous earth around her aviaries and
effectively kept the ants out that way. She also uses it to directly attack any hills in the area.
7 - I believe that the "new age chalk" is a combination of diatomaceous earth and boric acid. Boric acid is the major component in "Roach Proof" and is a fairly benign and very effective means of insect control.
8 - Amdro is another effective treatment, but it is an actual poison, but safer than others. Both Amdro and Logic are baits that the ants pick up and take into the mound so that the queen eats it.
A warm welcome to the forum!
Don't worry that it seems to not be working. These methods take time.
If you can find the main ant hill, then I found dumping a pot of boiling water straight from the stove is the quickest, easiest way to get rid of a colony (can't remember if it was someone on the forum that suggested it initially or something I found online, but it worked the one time I could actually find the darn hill (it took 3 pots over 2 days to get the job done)). But when you can't find the source, the Boric Acid/cotton ball approach as described in Yvonne's post worked for me when I couldn't find their hill.
For me, aspartame sweetener from a grocery store always works, on sugar ants and carpenter ants, anyway. Just tear open a few bags and set them in their path. Eventually the colony will disappear.
Mommabear
Member
I have used the boric acid and corn meal with great success.
One other thing I have done which has worked for other little creatures (usually wasps, spiders, pill bugs and ants) is orange oil. I just buy the NOW brand, put approx 1/8 cup in a 24 oz spray bottle. Add about 1/4 cup of vodka or grain alcohol and fill the rest of the bottle with water. Shake well.
The alcohol keeps your spray bottle from plugging/gumping up with orange oil.
Boric acid as above has been the bomb and best though. If you look at the Terro ant stuff Boric acid is the active ingredient.
One other thing I have done which has worked for other little creatures (usually wasps, spiders, pill bugs and ants) is orange oil. I just buy the NOW brand, put approx 1/8 cup in a 24 oz spray bottle. Add about 1/4 cup of vodka or grain alcohol and fill the rest of the bottle with water. Shake well.
The alcohol keeps your spray bottle from plugging/gumping up with orange oil.
Boric acid as above has been the bomb and best though. If you look at the Terro ant stuff Boric acid is the active ingredient.
- Joined
- May 22, 2012
- Messages
- 364
i have tried this method before , quite odd it didnt work for me , the packet states it has 36 mg aspartame , is it enough ?
Did you feed them long enough? I once had to feed carpenter ants in a cabin for many months. I never saw more than a few at a time.
A decade later, they still haven't returned.
Another time we had scads of sugar ants living in the grass by the sidewalk, and walking into the bakery where i work. After some other methods were tried, i fed them aspartame for a few weeks and they were gone.
A number of other times, it worked successfully. Never had it fail, just takes some time.
I presume it takes a while before the queen eats it.
If you have big mounds, you can also try what we used to do for big fire ant hills in the community garden back when i was in TX: we'd stir a bunch of diatomaceous earth into water in a bucket, and quickly dump it on the mound. Seemed to get rid of the mound.
But I thought DE didn't work once it was wet??????
Never heard that. This was some old DE that a friend had in a pile outside, all clumped up from past rains. He said i could take a bunch. It did work to get rid of at least most of the ants in the mounds.
Now if you used it when it was in large dry clumps, i doubt it would work. But the clumps dissolved in the water. That's probably why we did not use it dry.
I use the method of mixing borax and sugar together, really works well! It does take a few weeks before ants get the idea and ditch your yard, so be patient.
If you ever have ant or bugs on plants your tort won't be eating, spray with watered down vinegar... great for the plant but not the ants
If you ever have ant or bugs on plants your tort won't be eating, spray with watered down vinegar... great for the plant but not the ants
