Here are a few tips to prevent tiny or large black ants from entering your home and attacking your lifestyle hygiene:
- Preparing Entrance Areas: Biting or flying black ants enter through cracks, corners, windows, and doors. So you should seal all potential primary and hidden entrances to keep them out using sticky tape or anti-ant track seals.
- Avoid Black Ant Attractors: Ants come inside for food or warmth. So make sure to keep the food like juice, mapple syrup, sugar, fruits, and crumbled crackers covered. You should also remove the crumbs that gather on your floors by sweeping, cleaning, and vacuuming them regularly. Moreover, dirty homes also breed ants. Hence, it’s important to clean your kitchen and sink daily.
- Bait the Ants: Preventing black ants requires baiting them beforehand. For this, 2 tbsp boric acid powder or borax, 2 cups sugar or maple syrup, and 1 cup water produce a simple and efficient bait. Apply this mixture on a sheet or the black ant entrances outside your home to keep them distant.
Removal Methods
Finding black ants in your kitchen or different nooks and corners of your home can be a nightmare. This nightmare may lead you to the endless stress of how to get rid of black ants in the house. But don’t worry. You can quickly get rid of these pests with the right removal methods.
Today, multiple methods exist to eliminate tiny black ants in your living or workspace without much hassle. Ranging from natural to chemical-based and even physical – there are different methods to prevent pests from compromising your living hygiene.
Without further ado, let’s go ahead and explore these methods and how you can implement them:
Natural Methods
Using Diatomaceous Earth. This natural material kills ants and other crawling creatures but is safe for humans and pets. So sprinkle diatomaceous earth in corners, under sinks, windowsills, and other ant-prone areas. Moreover, after every week or two, vacuum the diatomaceous earth and replace it with new.
Using Essential Oil Spray: Tea tree, lavender, peppermint, lemon, and Windex oils naturally repel insects. So mix 10 drops of oil with one cup of water and create a repellent. Spray this repellent in a spray bottle around your house to repel ants.
Using Boric Acid: Ants and insects die after crawling over boric acid powder. So all you need to do is spread boric acid in corners and around rooms.
Using Cinnamon Powder. If you don’t have any other repellent, sprinkle cinnamon in the ant’s nest. This fine powder and its pungent smell repel ants. Thus, it prevents pests from returning.
Chemical-Based Methods
Using Commercial Bait: Commercial bait is a mixture of poison and sweetness that attracts and kills huge black ants. It works when ants ingest the bait and bring it back to the nest, poisoning the colony. Eventually, all the ants die after one or two life cycles.
Usage:
- If you use bait, be sure there are no children or pets around. Follow the packing directions to prepare the bait traps, then set them in ant trails.
- Since this takes time, let the traps stay for a few days. Meanwhile, keep your place tidy so the ants eat the bait instead of crumbs or sticky places.
Using Pesticide:
In this method, buy a shop formula, combine the materials according to the directions, pour the solution into a sprayer, and spray the infested rooms. You can also apply the solution outside your house to keep ants out. Moreover, this procedure usually results in immediate death. So sweep up any dead ants and properly dispose of them.
Usage:
- Since chemicals can make children and pets sick, keep them away from the sprayed areas.
- Directly spray on little and huge black ants using an aerosol spray. For this, indoor formulas work nicely in kitchens. Simply apply the spray anywhere you see ants crawling.
- To avoid sickening children or pets, wipe off and disinfect the area after spraying.
Physical Methods
Bringing Down the Black Ants Home: If you see black ants often, there’s a possibility that these pests may nest nearby. Hence, to get rid of them from inside your house, you need to completely get rid of their nest on the outside by locating it.
You can do this by placing some food on the floor for the ants to come and feed on. When they make a trail to the food, you can follow this trail to locate their nest. Typically, black ant nests on the outdoors are found in a garden, yard, or on tree branches.
Once you find their nest, pour boiling water on the nest.This way, all the small black ants inside the nest will die within. The best way to ensure that there is no living ant left, pour 2-3 bowls of hot water on the nest.
Conclusion
Ants, particularly black ants, are regular intruders into homes throughout the United States and can be hazardous to our health. They can be difficult to get rid of, but by utilizing the different ways indicated above, it is feasible to repel and eradicate ants over time. Commercial solutions are also available to kill or repel these pests.
Lastly, keeping your home clean and removing potential entry and hiding points for ants might help avoid further infestations.