Small red ants can often be found in people's homes. They can settle among bread, cereals and other food products, which leads to their spoilage, since ants leave traces of their vital activity everywhere. Such a neighborhood does not bring any benefit to a person, but only harm and inconvenience.
Nowadays, there are various chemicals that can get rid of such pests in a short period of time. In combination with natural means of control, as well as preventive measures, you can count on the high effectiveness of such remedies.
Red ants: appearance and features
India is the birthplace of small pests. From there, on ships with goods, they began their march around the world. Scientists first noticed them during excavations in Egyptian tombs, so they were called pharaoh ants. Sometimes they are called brownies, shipbirds or redheads.
The organization of the colony is similar to other species of these insects. The fertilized queen is 4–5 mm in size, dark brown in color, and lays eggs. There may be several queens in a nest, so the colony increases at a rapid rate. Male drones are slightly smaller in size than the queen. They live shorter than other inhabitants of the anthill, on average about 20 days.
Appearance
The main population of the nest consists of small, about 2 mm, working ants of red or dirty yellow color. Of these, only 10% go out to get food, the rest are engaged in servicing the queen, larvae, building and repairing the anthill, and guarding it.
Red ants living in the house do not hibernate and are active all year round.
Other deterrents
- We can cover the entrance with crushed orange peel and the ants will leave our kitchen.
- We use putty and insulation foam to seal cracks on the walls and near pipes - places where ants enter the house. Regular tape will also help.
- We will make barriers of salt around the perimeter: the ants will not overcome them and will leave.
- Calcium carbonate in regular chalk will drive ants out of our kitchen. By the way, it is completely harmless to us.
- Lemon juice will repel ants with a strong citrus smell - these insects cannot stand it.
- Sprinkle cayenne pepper along cracks and crevices to repel ants. But it causes a burning sensation in pets.
- Peppermint oil, black pepper, cinnamon, cloves, tobacco, bay leaves and even green tomato branches will drive ants out of our kitchen with a strong, pungent odor.
- Applying Vaseline around the edges of pet dishes will keep ants away from other people's food.
Advice! To prevent children or pets from tasting ant poison, put it in a jar and screw on the lid, making a couple of small holes in it. Then lightly coat the outside with poison-free bait.
How and why do ants get into an apartment?
There are several reasons why red ants appear in an apartment. These are heat-loving insects and for a comfortable existence they need an air temperature above +20°C. In cold climates, they can only live in heated areas. Most often, pests are found in houses where unsanitary conditions reign. There are many places to create nests here, there is no shortage of food, even if there are several anthills.
Initially, insects enter the house along with old furniture or things, from where they move into all the hollow spaces in the walls, floors, and baseboards. By the way, they can even create an anthill in household appliances.
As the colony grows, small red ants begin to explore neighboring apartments. Insects can also appear if neighbors begin repairs in an infected room or carry out disinfestation.
In high-rise buildings they quickly spread throughout the house.
Causes of red ants
For the normal functioning of these insects, it is necessary to have enough food and warmth. First of all, they are interested in food and only then in the right temperature. As a rule, red ants appear in the summer. There are several factors that have a significant impact on the appearance of ants in an apartment. For example:
- Sometimes residents themselves bring insects into the apartment along with their belongings or clothes. As a rule, this happens after long trips to warm countries.
- Insects themselves settle in the apartment if the conditions suit them. To survey the territory, they send scouts, who then return and give a signal to the rest of the colony.
Red pests can spoil food supplies and also carry various diseases, including fungal ones. They can infect an apartment with mold and also carry worm larvae. Therefore, fighting red ants is a very important task. At the same time, you need to remember that the result can only be obtained in combination with preventive measures. The rules are quite simple, but they can protect a person’s home from the invasion of such pests.
Damage from ants
Red ants eat food that is stored in the house. They especially love everything sweet and baked goods. They do not give up vegetables, fruits, and cereals. With a lack of nutrition, ants easily switch to things made of leather and fur. They may start eating glue and cellulose.
Having built a nest in household appliances, they often become the cause of its breakdown.
In search of prey, insects examine food waste and drag the remains of other arthropods into the nest, so they can carry dangerous microbes and bacteria on their paws.
Small red ants that settle in an apartment cause an allergic reaction in people prone to this disease.
Handy means of fighting ants
- Vinegar water spray. A spray of vinegar water, which is harmless to us, drives out ants. Using any sprayer, we will disperse it in the places favored by ants. And so that the insects do not come again, we will wipe the vents, the floor and the front door with vinegar. The ants will no longer return to the apartment. Fill the found anthill halfway with baking soda and pour vinegar into it - this is a guarantee of getting rid of ants.
- Corn flour. We feed the ants cornmeal, which they cannot process and kills them. In addition, corn flour is absolutely harmless to residents and animals. Wheat flour, like rice, when limp, ruptures the ant's stomach.
How to fight?
You need to get rid of small ants in your apartment as soon as you notice several individuals. One insect can accidentally enter the house on clothing or shoes. This is a working individual, incapable of reproduction. If several pests begin to appear in the kitchen at night, then it’s time to sound the alarm. They have already started building a nest and went out for prey to replenish their pantries.
In the fight against red-haired household pests, both folk remedies and pesticides are used.
Difficulties in fighting ants
It is difficult to fight red insects in an apartment, since only working individuals get out of the nest. By destroying them, you can only restrain the growth of the colony. Queens, safe in the nest, will continue to lay eggs, replacing losses in the ranks. Consequently, various traps are ineffective. In addition, the number of several egg-laying queens in one nest contributes to the rapid growth of the family. The separation of a young female to build her own anthill does not interrupt friendly ties between them. When one nest with red ants in an apartment is destroyed, the surviving individuals move to their neighbors.
During repairs or disinfestation, the colony, along with the queen, eggs and larvae, can move to an adjacent room and return after some time. If there is enough food for insects in the house, it is very difficult to remove them.
The colony
Pharaoh ants are able to develop resistance to certain types of toxic substances, which makes them invulnerable to some insecticides.
Traditional methods
In Russia, red house ants appeared only in the 19th century, but over two centuries people have tried many means in attempts to get rid of pests. Many of them are still effective today.
- Boric acid has been used for a long time as a means of helping to remove pests. It is best to add the powder to various baits: honey, sugar syrup, jam. You can mix with egg yolk and roll into small balls. The poisonous delicacy is laid out on insect paths, in corners, near baseboards. Working individuals drag poisoned food into the anthill and feed it to the larvae and the queen. After a short time, the colony dies.
- Borax is used in the same way as boric acid. The effect is achieved in a few weeks.
- Yeast mixed with sugar or honey begins to swell in the insect's stomach, which leads to its death.
- You can fight red ants using strong odors . They prevent them from finding their usual paths. Tansy, wormwood, and chamomile placed in the corners of the kitchen contribute to the relocation of the colony from the apartment. The same result is achieved by pouring ground black pepper and cinnamon. You can wash all tables, floors and baseboards with water and vinegar.
Chemicals
The use of pesticides will help destroy small pests much faster. Just remember to take precautions, since insecticides are not safe for people either. You need to poison ants in the house in the absence of children and animals. When choosing a product in a store, you should pay attention not to those that affect crawling insects.
- Aerosol cans are convenient to use and store, but are effective against pests only if an anthill can be detected. You can find it by tracking where the workers take their prey. Spraying of pesticides is carried out from a distance of approximately 20-30 cm from the surface. The most popular drugs are Kombat, Super Cobra, Raptor, Raid, Get.
If it was not possible to find all the anthills, the colony will quickly restore its numbers. It is also useless to use the drug when the nest is located outside the apartment.
- Gels containing insect poison are more effective in the fight against red ants. They are applied to the places of habitual insect trails. Since the drug has a pleasant smell for pests, they take it to the anthill, where they feed it to the queen and larvae. Gradually the entire colony dies. Experts recommend such products as Raptor, Global, Fas.
Gel Raptor
The disadvantage is that insects develop immunity to active ingredients.
- powders in dry form, since spraying a diluted product is effective only when it gets into the nest. It is not recommended for use if small children live in the apartment or there are pets. The toxic chemical enters the nest on the legs of the working individuals and leads to the death of all inhabitants of the anthill. The drugs Executioner, Tetrix, Regent help well.
- Using an aquafumigator will ensure that you get rid of pests. The disadvantage is the high toxicity of the products used, so the apartment is prepared in advance for treatment by hermetically packing food and dishes. They move from home for about a day along with animals, flowers, and fish. You can return only after airing the room and general cleaning.
Why are ants dangerous in the house?
In nature, ants are of great benefit, but as for an apartment or house, their presence is absolutely undesirable. If you don’t fight them, they will appear not only in the kitchen, but also in other rooms. Naturally, they are not needed here, especially in closets with linen or clothes.
Ants are attracted to crumbs or areas where sweet tea has been spilled. If you have a habit of drinking tea or coffee not at the dining table, but on the sofa or in bed, then you need to be prepared for the fact that ants will soon appear in the bed. In this case, you can forget about comfortable sleep forever.
In addition to the fact that ants will bring discomfort to your apartment or house, they can bring a number of infectious diseases. After all, ants climb everywhere, so on their tiny legs you can find various microorganisms, as well as pathogenic bacteria.
In this regard, if you find ants in your apartment, you should immediately begin to destroy them. The faster the problem is solved, the more comfortable a person will feel in his apartment.
3 ways to get rid of ants in your house. It is very easy!
Prevention measures
House ants do not live where there is nothing to eat. If the apartment is constantly kept clean, the trash can is emptied at night, all crumbs are removed immediately after eating, the dishes are washed on time, then insects, even if they appear in the apartment, will quickly leave. We must not forget about proper storage of food. They should be placed in closed containers.
When washing floors, you can add a little vinegar, ammonia or aromatic oils to the water. Strong odors are what red ants are afraid of.
To prevent these creatures from getting into your apartment from your neighbors, you need to seal all the cracks in the floor, near the baseboards, and near the pipelines. Place a mosquito net over the ventilation holes.
Sometimes insects enter the house along with old furniture, so before bringing it into the apartment, you need to carefully inspect all the joints and treat them with an aerosol preparation for preventative purposes.
Features of insect life
Red ants or pharaohs are small red-colored insects whose body size is no more than 2-3 mm.
They are social insects, forming large colonies of several hundred thousand individuals. In the colony there is a clear hierarchy of three castes, and representatives of each of them have their own responsibilities: there is a queen, which is several times larger than the others and is responsible for laying eggs, guards and working ants. The last caste is the most numerous; the task of individuals is to obtain food for the elite.
This social division suggests that the destruction of several dozen ants will not help get rid of the insects completely - the female will restore the population within five days.
Red ants cannot live on the street; the only place with suitable living conditions is a human home.
Where do ants come from in the kitchen?
Insects are found everywhere. They often live in buildings classified as old housing stock. In the interiors of old buildings, it is easier for them to find a place to create a nest and gain access to living quarters. Small brownish-yellow insects come from outside and parasitize next to a person.
Having settled in one apartment, they quickly spread throughout the multi-story building. They travel through ventilation shafts and sewer pipes. Each individual is a potential carrier of a bouquet of various bacteria.
There are often messages on forums that ants suddenly appeared in the kitchen. If they haven't appeared before but are seen during a food delivery, there is a 90% chance they came into the house from a food delivery service.
Who wouldn't refuse to be next to a person?
The most common household pests are black, red or yellow ants. They choose warm rooms with high humidity. Voracious insects are found in boxes with cereals, behind baseboards, under the sink or bathtub between tiles that have fallen off the wall . There you can also find settlements of small red pest ants.
Interesting! Under the influence of food and room temperature, the color and size of insects change. So red ants can turn yellow, and black ones can turn brown. As a rule, domestic ants are smaller than wild ones.
Residents of warm latitudes are annoyed by pharaoh ants, who build their nests in old boxes, under furniture or linoleum . Their main requirement for habitat is high humidity and temperature.
House ants, photo below:
How to prevent pests?
It is necessary to maintain cleanliness, and cleaning should be carried out not only in the main areas of the home, but also in remote corners, hidden crevices, under piles of things, rubbish, and behind baseboards. Leaks in window frames, doorways, walls and ceilings are filled with working mixtures or covered with tape.
General cleaning should be carried out weekly, using strong-smelling products, preferably containing chlorine.
Food should not be left in the open. All non-hermetically packaged products are placed in the refrigerator. Vegetables/fruits are stored in food containers. Periodically, it is necessary to carry out prevention using folk remedies: floors and corners, hidden places are treated with aggressive substances (vinegar, turpentine, kerosene).
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Traditional methods - environmentally friendly and practical
Since most insecticides created by industrial enterprises contain deadly poisons, it is definitely not worth abusing them at home. But it’s worth paying special attention to environmentally friendly folk remedies. Among the most popular options are:
- a mixture of boric acid with water, honey and sugar - the resulting syrup is applied in drops in places where red pests most often appear;
- yeast paste - a mixture of liquid yeast with sugar, used as bait, destructive to pests;
- corn flour - it is destructive to the digestive tract of pests.
Boric acid can also be replaced with brown acid. Otherwise, folk remedies are well suited for pest control in non-residential spaces - in country houses, auxiliary premises, where they can be applied as liberally as possible and left for a long time.
Get ants out of your home forever using folk remedies
Repellent
The most humane way is to simply scare away the ants with the smells they fear. In this case, the insects will simply leave, but will not die.
It’s worth thinking about your neighbors - will they be happy if a crowd of redheads moves in with them? In addition, neighbors can also drive away insects with odors on their own, so the ants will return to you. In any case, if you feel sorry for insects, it is better to use odorous products.
Use of essential oils
Ants do not like strong aromas, so if you add 10 drops of lavender essential oil and the same amount of mint to a glass of water, and pour two tablespoons of alcohol or vodka into it, they will not be very pleased. Next, lubricate the ant route with the resulting solution, or pour it into a sprinkler and spray. At the same time, you can soak cotton wool or paper napkins with it and put it in cabinets.
Citrus
Another scent that ants cannot tolerate is citrus fruits. All you need to do is save the lemon or orange zest and dry it. Different drying methods are discussed in this article.
Vegetable oil or glycerin
There is an even simpler way - simply lubricate the surfaces on which insects walk with vegetable oil or glycerin. Probably no one likes oiled surfaces, including ants, so they will leave. And if you use clove oil, you will also get aromatherapy that is unpleasant for insects.
Scented plants
If you continue to press on the sore subject of redheads - the sense of smell, then you can also use fragrant plants like mint, wormwood, elderberry, lavender, tansy and pine needles. Dried twigs are placed in cabinets and in the path of insects. Tomato tops and tobacco are also used for similar purposes.
Vinegar
Vinegar has an aroma that not all people can tolerate, so the ants will definitely carry their paws away. It can be used to lubricate the main points of the route or the insect shelter itself, or you can mix it with water 1:1 and spray the solution.
Garlic
Garlic is another odorous repellent. Again, many people cannot stand this aroma of health, and insects even more so. There are two options: you can simply cut the head into pieces and spread it out, or grate it and mix it with vegetable oil. The resulting mixture is poured into bottle caps and placed in the required places. Insects will run away from such a scent.
Ammonia
In this case, there is a risk that not only ants will leave the apartment, but also people, since the aroma of ammonia is too specific. To fight ants, you need to dilute ammonia with water in a ratio of 1:10 and wipe the necessary surfaces, or better yet, all of them. The advantage is that after 20 minutes a person will no longer feel the aroma, but the ants will feel it for a long time.
Salt
It would seem, what’s wrong with salt? But the ants avoid even this, so you can scatter a little “randomly” in places where they accumulate. If mixed with soda or pepper, the product will become even more effective.
Soap
If you don’t create a new scent, you can simply wash off the old one. Ordinary soapy water can help with this; it needs to go along the route of the pests and wash off their “pheromones.” Ants don't like soap, so they will leave their camp. To achieve this effect for sure, you can add a few drops of pine essential oil to the solution, and sprinkle soap crumbs on the areas where ants are active.
Black pepper
It also has a repulsive property for ants, so it is enough to spread ground pepper or dry pods on insect paths. Other repellent spices that can help kill ants include cinnamon, mustard, or cloves. The idea is the same - place it along the ant paths.
An ordinary eggshell will also help in intimidation. The main thing is not to wash or crush it.
Millet
Another unexpected product that ants try to avoid is millet. It is not clear why, but the main thing is that this method of struggle works. Dry grain must be sprinkled in insect habitats - that’s all. This is definitely a safe way to exterminate ants.
Boric acid
Boric acid can act as a poison in the bait that worker ants take to their queen. So that they do not suspect anything, boric acid is dripped into honey or boiled yolk.
Another interesting recipe for pest bait: you need to take a small amount of warm water and dilute yeast in it, then add a little jam. The workers will again take the delicacy to their queen, and the entire colony will be killed.
If you want to catch ants, you can make a trap. This requires a jar and a very sweet syrup inside, which will act as glue. Ants have a terrible sweet tooth, so they will happily climb into a jar, but will not be able to get out of this “house”.
Soda
One of the most useful things for an experienced housewife. It can be used to wash towels, wash a kettle, and remove ants. At the same time, it is completely harmless to humans. But it’s impossible to force ants to eat pure soda, so we use a trick and mix it with powdered sugar. But you need to be prepared for a difficult sight - the ants will experience severe pain from poisoning, and convulsions may even begin.
Borax
Its action is similar to boric acid. A paste is made from it in a 1:1 ratio to sugar and a small addition of water, which is used to lubricate cardboard. The ants mistake the poison for a delicacy because of its sweet aroma and bring it to the “queen” for testing. As a result, the entire colony becomes infected and dies.
Mixtures
Prepare a mixture of 1 teaspoon of alcohol, 2 tablespoons of any dish soap and add water. Use a spray bottle to disperse the mixture - the alcohol will cause the ants to leave the kitchen. Place a meat bait of 2 tablespoons of minced meat and 1 teaspoon of borax in the path of the ants.
Note! Poisons are less effective in warm weather.
Only regular treatment with various effective preparations will forever solve the issue of how to get rid of kitchen ants (Also find out how to get rid of flies in the kitchen). And prevention will prevent them from coming into our kitchen.
Source: gearbestblog.ru/uhod/nasekomie/934-kak-izbavitsya-ot-muravev-na-kuhne
