Finding ants in an apartment or in a private house can never add optimism to the owners. The sight of insects crawling on food and things is upsetting. In addition, they are capable of carrying some infections. Some people who have small children and animals in the house do not want to use chemicals to get rid of pests. Folk remedies proven over the years and safe for health will come to the rescue. Our article will tell everyone how to get rid of annoying insects using simple methods proven by the experience of many generations.
The fight against ants is often carried out using the repellent method. This is especially relevant when there are not so many insects on your territory, and also for preventive purposes. Our grandmothers also used chamomile, mint, wormwood, elderberry, and lavender, the smells of which are not tolerated by pests and tend to leave the place where such plants are located.
Today, the arsenal of apartment and house owners includes such folk remedies for domestic ants as cinnamon, anise, cloves, garlic, lemon and orange, red pepper, and turmeric. It is recommended to grind chamomile, wormwood, anise, and cloves and sprinkle the resulting powder on the places where the goosebumps are located. Garlic is used to smear baseboards where uninvited guests like to move, as well as thresholds and cracks between floor boards.
A mixture of red pepper and cinnamon sprinkled on the threshold in a thick layer will help keep insects out of your home. It is recommended to smear ant trails with camphor alcohol, turpentine, unrefined kerosene sunflower oil.
Folding helps bay leaf, pieces fresh cucumber, spilling salt. You can treat the walls and floors with vinegar, soap solution, and cologne. All these methods are based on the influence of the unpleasant aroma of natural repellents.
To combat ants in the house, many people purchase essential oils. They are easier and more convenient to use than herbs. You just need to dip a cotton swab into the container and hold it near the food storage areas. Since the smell disappears quickly, this product has a short shelf life.
A folk remedy for ants in the house, boric acid, works great. It can be affordable price purchase at a pharmacy. It does not have a negative impact on the health of people and pets. It has insecticidal, fungicidal and herbicidal properties. Based on boric acid They make a lot of poison baits. For example, you can mix one part acid with ten parts sugar, add 2 cups of water. Place the finished bait in containers where you most often see pests. Replace sugar with jam, jelly, peanut butter or maple syrup. Often 1 packet of boric acid is mixed with 1 teaspoon of sugar or honey, yolk chicken egg. Balls are formed from this mass and placed in places where goosebumps are detected. The method allows you to remove pests in 10 – 15 days. Another acid is mixed with any minced meat. Balls are also made from the resulting mixture.
Another popular recipe tells how to get rid of ants in an apartment using boric acid. To do this, take a sachet of the product, 3 yolks boiled eggs and 3 potatoes. The potatoes are crushed to a puree and mixed with the rest of the ingredients. The formed balls are laid out on ant trails and in places where uninvited guests are located. Another option is to mix equal parts of borax, glycerin, honey, sugar and add water. You can cook thick semolina porridge, add acid, sweeten the bait with sugar or honey. Used with balls. It is necessary to use such an amount of acid that will not kill the ant immediately, but will allow it to return to its home and treat its relatives. To lay out baits based on boric acid, it is permissible to use paper or foil. Place them out of the reach of small children and pets. 
Good means to actually get rid of annoying insects are soda and ammonia. Soda is an effective and easy-to-use drug. It should be scattered on ant paths. How to get rid of goosebumps using this method? You need to leave the substance for several days, then update the layer until the uninvited guests disappear. You should be careful with ammonia. Ammonia vapors are poisonous. It's better not to breathe in them long time. And it is not recommended to use this remedy if you have small children, elderly people or pets living with you.
Video “Folk methods of fighting ants”
From the video you will learn how to fight these insects.
How to get rid of it in simple ways
How to get rid of the presence of goosebumps on your territory in simple ways? You can make sweet traps. You just need to place the sticky and sweet substance in a small container. Dissolved sugar, honey, jam are suitable. 
Once there, the insects get stuck with their paws and are no longer able to get out on their own. Some owners simply place bowls of water. But getting there and drowning may be less chilling than with sweet traps. When placing baits, it is advised to block the access of water to pests. Starch scattered nearby will enhance their effectiveness.
A good remedy that is in every home can be called eggshells. Shells from several pieces with the remainder of the raw protein are placed in places where pests accumulate.
A good result is obtained by using double-sided tape or adhesive tape. They need to be glued to thick paper. Jam or syrup will serve as bait for such a homemade trap. It is best to place it near the threshold or on baseboards.
Cereals, which every housewife has, will also come to the rescue. You need to spread grains of oatmeal on the ant trails or sprinkle them with corn. Yeast can be found in any home. To create poisoned bait, dilute them in water and add sugar. 
How to get rid of insects when you're just drinking coffee? You need to spread the grounds remaining after cooking it in places where goosebumps are detected.
A simple and inexpensive insect repellent is activated carbon. It is used by grinding the tablets to a powder state.
It is unattractive for goosebumps to smear Vaseline on the cracks of doors and windows.
Sometimes pouring boiling water over the discovered nest helps. It can also be vacuumed. But it is not always possible to destroy the queen, which quickly replaces the losses in the family with new individuals.
Prevention
In order not to rack your brains over how to get rid of ants, it’s easier to make sure that they don’t appear on your territory at all. After all, uninvited guests do not immediately arrive in a huge colony. And you still need to try to bring your home to a state where there will be a lot of them. Do not leave dirty dishes in the kitchen and rooms; put leftover food in sealed containers and in the refrigerator. Make sure there are no crumbs on the floor. 
Monitor the cleanliness of the trash can and remove its contents in a timely manner. The place where it stands should be cleaned periodically. As well as places where containers with pet food are placed. It is best to purchase bowls with special stands for them. From time to time, check your apartment or house for any cracks in the wallpaper that have come away from the wall. Wallpaper can be pasted. The cracks are sealed with sealant or caulked. Temporarily, if there is no sealant in the house and you cannot buy it immediately, it is permissible to seal the cracks with tape. When cleaning wet, use a soapy solution. They need to wash the floors, wipe the walls and baseboards.
A modern preventive measure is to install indoors ultrasonic repeller. In this case, the ant individuals sent for reconnaissance will inform others that this place cannot be considered suitable for living and comfortable. The smells of various herbs are used both to kill and prevent the appearance of insects.
Video “Effective methods of fighting ants”
From the video you will learn how to effectively drive ants out of your home.
What to do if ants are spotted in your home? One individual that strays by chance is not dangerous - perhaps it was brought in from the street. With regular invasions and an increase in the number of “aliens,” you should find out how to get rid of house ants in your apartment and start taking action. If measures are not taken, insects will soon appear in food containers, table drawers and even bedding. Control tactics include preventive measures, the use of folk remedies, chemicals, and in exceptional situations - contacting specialists from the pest control service.
In our climate zone, two types of ants are mainly found in apartments.
- Pharaoh ants (domestic) are red or yellowish insects, 2-3 mm in size, not adapted to life in nature in temperate zone conditions. They settle only in residential premises.
- House ants (thief ants) - live both in the house and on the street, they are somewhat larger than pharaoh ants, and have a yellow color. In the city they are usually found in basements, on the lower floors - there they establish a colony, running into apartments for food. In nature, they find food in the nests of large ants, stealing food and brood from them (hence the second name of the species).
Before looking for a remedy for ants in your apartment, it doesn’t hurt to find out how they get into it. The most likely reasons are as follows.
1. Infestation of basements and attics with ants, as well as neighboring apartments. One family of ants can spread throughout your entire home with ventilation ducts, garbage chutes.
2. Accidental introduction of an ant nest. It can get into the room with food, household appliances, and old furniture.
Note: Random visitors to the apartment may turn out to be red forest, black garden ants, wood borers. All of them are larger than the pharaonic ones, and do not make nests in their homes due to the lack of their usual food. Therefore, even if 2-3 dozen individuals are brought from the dacha along with a bag of potatoes, the owners will not have to think about how to deal with ants in the apartment: after a few days they will die anyway.
Why are harmless-looking house ants dangerous for people, given that their bites are almost imperceptible? The harm of these small insects is as follows:
- "traveling" from toilets and utility rooms into the house, ants carry pathogens of infectious diseases and various bacteria on their abdomens and paws;
- spoil food;
- they carry food into secluded corners of the house - as a result, it decomposes and mold forms;
- create storage areas for their own waste.
Various methods of controlling ants
Poisoning workers does not make sense: the queen ant is very fertile, so the size of the colony will quickly recover. Deciding how to get rid of ants in an apartment forever, you need to strive to detect and destroy the nest. It can be located under baseboards, door frames, inside furniture and household appliances, in electrical outlets, even in an old coat. Over the course of a year, one ant family increases to several thousand individuals, among which young females appear, striving to create new colonies.
Flying ants with wings are queens Effective remedies for domestic ants in an apartment according to their intended purpose are conventionally divided into two types:
- for transfer by worker ants to the nest - these can be special gels, powders, traps with bait, pharmaceuticals;
- for direct destruction of anthills, processing technical premises, adjacent to the apartment - this group includes potent aerosols and sprays.
Folk remedies for ants
Many effective recipes have been compiled by inventive housewives based on available pharmaceutical drugs and food products. The following are folk remedies that have been repeatedly tested in practice for ants in the apartment.
Fighting ants in the apartment folk remedies can be effective only if we join forces with our neighbors. If it is impossible to fulfill this condition, it is better to use chemicals.
How to deal with house ants in an apartment using chemicals
Dusts, pencils
The question often arises: how to get rid of red ants in an apartment without harming your own health? In addition to folk remedies, for the preparation of which there is not always enough time, you can use low-toxic dusts (powders) and pencils (crayons). They contain insecticides that are safe for humans and pets. Due to the low concentration of the active substance, removing ants with these means will take 3-4 weeks.
Draw chalk lines in all places where ants may appear: along baseboards, window sills, pipes, along the bottom edge kitchen furniture. The same places can be sprinkled with slightly toxic dust. An effective remedy for domestic ants in an apartment, reviews of which are almost always positive, is the “Mashenka” pencil. The powders “Clean House”, Pyrethrum, and Phenaxin performed well. 
Gels
These preparations also contain insecticides and are also good bait. The death of the ants occurs within a day. During this time, the insects manage to poison all the inhabitants of the colony, including the queen. Gels are more effective than pencils and dusts; the ants die in about 10-14 days. 
Traps
The most effective are plastic containers with strong-smelling bait. Having gotten dirty in a poisonous powder or liquid, the ants will definitely carry the poison into the nest. The special design makes the trap absolutely safe for people and animals. Using Velcro, the containers are attached to any desired location, on a horizontal or vertical plane. Imported devices Combat Superattack, Bayer Garden, and domestic products Deadex and Dohloks have proven themselves well.
Advice: Do not buy sticky tapes or electric traps. Only the insects that are caught die in them, and more and more messengers will come from the anthill in search of food. In this fight, victory will be for the ants - this has been proven by the experience of many housewives.
Aerosols
Spraying insecticides is advisable if your place of residence is definitely the location of the nest - otherwise only the working individuals will die. When using aerosol ant repellents (Raptor, Raid, Combat, Dichlorvos), follow the instructions included with the product. Here are the basic safety rules:
Calling specialists
If an ant invasion reaches catastrophic proportions, this means that a network of nests has already formed in a high-rise building. How to get rid of house ants not only in the apartment, but throughout the entire infested house? This problem is successfully solved by pest control teams. Total cleaning of premises is carried out in three stages:
- inspection of the territory, search for nests, planning of the operation;
- treatment of probable insect habitats (plinths, floor coverings, cracks, communications) with special equipment using water, steam, chemical solutions and biological preparations;
- control of processing results.
Usually, the involvement of specialists gives 100% positive result. The only drawback of the method is its high cost.
Preventive measures
To avoid the question of how to get ants out of an apartment on your own, they practice simple everyday prevention at home.
- Products in the kitchen are put in the refrigerator or covered with lids (especially fruits and sweets). Containers with sugar, jars with honey and jam are tightly sealed.
- After preparing food and finishing eating it, wash dishes, wipe work surfaces, and sweep up crumbs on the floor. The kitchen is wet cleaned daily. Food waste is removed regularly, otherwise it will attract an army of ants.
- Carefully seal the cracks (especially under windows, behind baseboards). Insulate the gaps between openings in the walls and pipes passing through them.
Ants cannot tolerate strong odors. To repel insects that come into the apartment for food, cloves of garlic, bags of mint, cinnamon, elderberry, cloves, and medicinal chamomile are placed on shelves and in cabinets. Ant paths and baseboards are rubbed with garlic, smeared with sunflower oil, lemon or camphor.
Tweet
Plus
There are about twelve thousand species of ants, natural conditions only some of them are dangerous to humans. But any of the species causes a lot of trouble when it decides to live with you.
There are only six species of ants that prefer to live in the same house as humans: house ants, turf ants, odorous ants, Argentine ants, thief ants and carpenter ants. The latter are capable of destroying wooden furniture and structures in the house and are almost impossible to remove on your own. If you notice these, immediately call the pest control service.
Ants are not pests in the broad sense of the word; they protect people from fleas, bedbugs, flies, and moths by eating their larvae. Like any other insects, ants fulfill their role in nature and the food chain. It is not necessary to completely destroy ants; for comfortable coexistence, it is enough to restrain the growth of the population and limit their penetration into human housing. But ants are a nuisance when they live with you: they spoil food, spread germs, scare guests and disrupt the order and cleanliness of the kitchen. You should not put up with such neighbors, despite the fact that they do not seem as dangerous and unpleasant as cockroaches. Ants eat everything! They move from the dog bowl to the bread bin, from the bread bin to the sink, and from there to the cat litter box, spreading bacteria and germs throughout the house.
To learn how to remove house ants, read the instructions to the end. Stop at any of the steps when you see that the ants have disappeared and are no longer encroaching on your home. If ants in your garden or dacha do not cause you any inconvenience, there is no need to fight them! They will protect your crop from many types of pests. If you live in a private house, removing ants will take you a little longer. Try to find the nest and fight it.
Step-by-step instructions: how to get rid of house ants forever
Ready-made chemicals are the easiest way to get rid of insects. But such remedies have a negative impact on environment and are not 100% safe for humans, cats and dogs. Ants, like any insects, quickly adapt to chemicals and lose their sensitivity to poison. Therefore, we tried to focus on natural and folk remedies for killing ants, which are no less effective, but much more harmless.
To fight ants you will need:
- orthoboric acid (alcohol solution),
- dishwashing liquid,
- solid or liquid soap,
- essential oils (mint, citrus, eucalyptus),
- dry semolina,
- ground coffee,
- Contacts of a professional exterminator (as a last resort).
STEP 1. Prevention
Prevention – best treatment, and not only in terms of health. House ants don't just appear: first, scout ants come to your house. Their goal is to find out if there is food here. If they find food remains in the sink, on the floor, on the table, or dried stains from sweet jam or honey, they return to the nest and bring the rest of the ants.
To prevent the appearance of ants, keep your kitchen clean.
- Do not leave dishes in the sink, wash them immediately. Leftover food on plates and pots attracts insects that can enter the sink through the drain. If you still don’t have time to wash the dishes, fill them with washing up liquid. Soap suds will protect dishes from ants.
- Wipe all surfaces daily, including the floor and window sill.
- Store food in the refrigerator or in a sealed container. Airtight containers are perfect for this purpose. But you can simply put all the food in the refrigerator, leaving nothing on the stove or table. Ants cannot get into the refrigerator due to the rubberized handle and low temperature.
- Clean the floor and take out the trash regularly. A trash can and crumbs on the floor are great bait. Destroy it and protect yourself from unwanted neighbors.
- Do not leave jars of jam, honey, condensed milk and other sweets in the open. Sugar and sweets are the favorite delicacy of ants (and cockroaches, too, by the way); leftover sweets will most quickly contribute to the appearance of a colony of ants in your kitchen.
- Teach your children to clean up after themselves. Do not allow your husband to dine outside the kitchen area.
- Pet food bowls should be covered or kept out of reach of insects.
If all the rules are followed, even if scout ants sneak into your kitchen, if they don’t find suitable food, they will go look for it elsewhere, leaving your house alone. A clean kitchen will protect you not only from ants, but also from cockroaches.
If you have already noticed the appearance of the first scouts and do not know how to get rid of ants, organize a spring cleaning! Get rid of everything that smells, throw away leftover food, close up the detergents (sometimes ants confuse aromatic lemon dishwashing detergent with jam), thoroughly wash all cabinets, door ends, floors and windowsills with a water solution and vinegar. Maintain sterile cleanliness for 5-7 days - and the ants will go looking for a new place to live.
STEP 2. Blocking the entrance
Carefully inspect the kitchen, especially those places where you have already noticed ants. How did they get into your house? You'll likely find a few holes or cracks near the baseboard, near the vent, and between the wall and kitchen set, in the window frame. Seal these cracks carefully. Best choice– silicone sealant in a tube. With this sealant it is easy to coat all the cracks without special knowledge. Water-repellent putty will also work. You can use tape or greasy cream, but only as a temporary remedy, for 1-2 days. This way you will block access to the house for new ants and block those that have already entered.
Even if you haven't noticed ants yet, ensure that entrances are blocked off when you move in. new apartment or during renovation.
STEP 3. Destruction of traces
To understand how to deal with ants in an apartment, you need to know that each ant leaves a trail along which other ants find it. So rare ants crawling around the trash can gradually fill the entire kitchen. Your task is to neutralize those insects that have already made their way to you and destroy their trace. 
Your weapon is soapy water. Dissolve a bar of soap in water, pour the solution into a flower spray bottle and spray those ants that catch your eye. Soap combined with water will kill the ants and erase their chemical trail so that other ants won't follow it. Add a couple of drops of essential oils (lemon, lime, mint, eucalyptus or orange) to the solution; they will enhance the effect of the solution and give the room a pleasant smell.
The second option is an aqueous solution of vinegar. Add 1-2 tablespoons of vinegar to the water and also spray on the ants.
STEP 4. Strengthen your protection
For added protection, create ant barriers. Barriers are small-width fences made from natural products. If you turn to your grandmother, she will certainly tell you how to get ants out of the house using folk remedies: chalk, activated carbon, turmeric, vinegar and cinnamon. Such fences are similar to a protective magic circle made of salt.
Select one ingredient from the list (take what you already have):
- regular white chalk
- activated carbon,
- turmeric or curry
- vinegar,
- ground cinnamon,
- baby powder,
- black, red pepper or a mixture of peppers,
- citrus essential oils,
- fatty cream (vaseline, hand cream),
- washing powder.
Grind the selected dry product and spread it in a thin line around the perimeter of the kitchen, focusing special attention baseboards and windows. Use essential oils with a barrier product. Or add crushed dry mint or bay leaf to chalk or powder, they will strengthen the barrier. The sense of smell is the strongest sense organ not only in humans, but also in almost all terrestrial organisms. Ants are no exception. They are afraid of the aromas of mint, garlic, cloves, bay leaves, citrus and lavender.
The aroma of coffee beans or grounds will confuse newly born ants, and they will not be able to find their way to food. If you know where the main ant nest is, then pour ground coffee into the anthill. Repeat this every week and within a couple of months the entire colony will be destroyed. 
For barriers around the sink and food prep area, mix dish soap with baking soda and rub the mixture into all crevices and creases. This mixture will protect against the penetration of new ants.
STEP 5. Create traps
Destruction of traces, blocking the entrance and barriers protect against the entry of new ants, now you need to get rid of those that have already entered the house.
An ant trap is a bait that is attractive in appearance, but dangerous in its content. Natural traps come in several types.
- From orthoboric acid.
Orthoboric acid is a food poison. It is also dangerous for humans and pets. Be extremely careful when using it. 
For the trap, prepare sweet syrup, honey or condensed milk. Leave a couple of spoons of sweetness in the place where the ants will definitely smell it. Pour acid around the perimeter of the bait so that you can get to the sweet only by going through the poison. Use gloves and cotton swabs, avoid contact with the acid, and ensure that children and pets are not harmed.
Orthoboric acid does not kill the insect immediately, but gradually destroys it from the inside. The ant manages to visit the nest and bring poison to its relatives. So he will not only die himself, but also destroy several dozen others.
Orthoboric acid is sold in pharmacies.
Ants eat everything they consider edible, but not all foods can be digested. Food traps are safe for cats, dogs and children. Place cornmeal or semolina in the area where you saw the ants. Semolina and corn swell in the insect's stomach, leading to its death. Dangerous for ants and natural coffee. Feed them ground coffee and they will die (this is a long way, it will take 2-3 weeks).
There are a huge number of ready-made poisons. If the naturalness of the method is not important, then use it. Choose a product that is safe for children, animals and the environment.
STEP 6. Getting rid of dangerous species
The most dangerous ants for humans and their homes are carpenter ants and fire ants. The former are capable of destroying wooden furniture, doors, window frames. Signs of woodworms: clumps of wings on wooden surfaces; traces of droppings resembling sawdust; strange sounds and rustles, chattering in the walls wooden house, cabinet doors or shelving.
You can try to get rid of them yourself. 
Use traps: woodworms love sugar, add boric acid to it.
Vacuum the nest if you find one. Afterwards, be sure to destroy the contents of the vacuum cleaner bag away from the house.
Contact a professional, some of them use natural remedies.
But we don’t recommend getting rid of fire ants on your own: they are aggressive, bite and attack people! Their bites cause an allergic reaction, itching and redness. If you notice these ants, call a professional exterminator immediately. 
You can only get rid of a fire ant nest yourself if it is in the garden or yard. Protect yourself with the most closed clothing made of smooth, impermeable fabrics, and wear rubber boots. Treat your boots with greasy cream or Vaseline to prevent ants from crawling on you. Choose a cold day (on such days the ants rise higher to keep warm) and pour several buckets of boiling water into the anthill. First add vinegar and essential oils to the water. Repeat the next day and 3-4 more times.
Fortunately, fire ants rarely invade apartments, especially in northern latitudes. There is a high probability of encountering them in the garden or in a private house.
Attention!
Orthoboric acid is poison! Be extremely careful when using it. Lethal dose for an adult 15 grams, for a child – 4. Keep it out of the reach of children and pets. Warn your family about the dangers of orthoboric acid.
Make sure your country does not prohibit its use.
To spray ants, use undiluted vinegar (9 or 12%).
Pyrethrin (a natural insecticide) is deadly to felines. Do not use it under any circumstances if you have cats! Warn the exterminator about this.
Traps can be placed on pieces of cardboard so as not to stain the floor and kitchen surfaces. The ants will carry small pieces of cardboard into the nest and contribute to the poisoning of the entire colony.
Instead of soap solution, you can use hydrogen peroxide. It is completely harmless to people and pets, has no odor and instantly kills ants.
Place a three-liter jar of sweet water at the bottom. Ants will climb into the jar for sweets and drown in the water.
If after 1-2 weeks of self-control the ants have not disappeared, contact an exterminator. His help will save your nerves and health. In addition, there are exterminators who use natural products that are not harmful to the environment.
The attack of these invaders is repulsed in different ways- modern and ancient. In the fight against these insects, the chemical industry suggests using gels, aerosols, soluble poisons and the like.
Each of them is effective in its own way, but all of these drugs also have their own disadvantages.
For example:
- pencil - insects get used to it;
- trap houses are not cheap, about 120 rubles. per piece, but they need to be used in large quantities, otherwise the result will be insignificant;
- aerosol – effective remedy, but it contains deodorized gas, which causes headaches in people;
- gels - to destroy insects, they must contain at least 0.05% fipronil, which causes an enlargement of the thyroid gland in humans.
Most of all insecticides used to control ants contain deodorized kerosene, which is very harmful to our health. If it is possible to leave the premises for disinfection for at least three days, then chemicals It's not scary to use. But if you have nowhere to go, and the proximity to crawling creatures does not please you at all, you will have to use old-fashioned methods.
How our grandfathers got rid of ants in the apartment
1 way
One of the most effective means of fighting ants is boric acid bait. To do this, the yolk of a hard-boiled egg is mixed with something sweet, such as honey or sugar. Some people add jam. Add 20 g of boric acid to this mixture. Next, you need to make small balls from the mixture and place them in “suspicious” places. Within 24 hours you will see many dead insects. Borax is also used as a poison in this recipe.
It’s good if you keep these balls for at least a month so that not a single insect remains in the room.
The good thing about this method is that the ants transmit the poison to each other, and as a result, the entire ant nest and the female itself are destroyed. Yeast and sugar are also a “killer” treat for ants.
Method 2
Ants don't like the smell of garlic, so if you don't mind the smell, rub a few cloves of garlic all over your baseboards.
3 way
Tape trap. Place double-sided tape around the perimeter of a regular A4 sheet, and put some goodies in the middle for these food lovers. The disadvantage of this method is that only a small part of the ants will be exterminated.
Advice: Once you start exterminating pests in your home, invite your neighbors to support this idea - only through joint efforts will you achieve good results in the fight against these little invaders.
Preventing the appearance of ants in the apartment
If you are lucky enough to get rid of an invasion of uninvited animals in your apartment, do not relax - the ants may return again. To prevent this from happening, take preventive measures:
Don't leave food out for ants. Carefully monitor the cleanliness of your kitchen, try not to leave dirty dishes for a long time and thoroughly wipe work surfaces from food residues. Take out the trash more often, which serves as a beacon in your kitchen for a swarm of ants.
Periodically carry out wet cleaning in the apartment with ammonia. Dilute 1 tablespoon of ammonia into 10 liters of water, treat kitchen surfaces with this solution and wash the floor.
Protect ventilation inlets. Insects can enter your apartment through ventilation holes, so stick a strip around the perimeter of the ventilation pipe double sided tape 5 centimeters wide. The adhesive track will hold back the onslaught of uninvited living creatures.
Finding insects crawling in your home is very unpleasant. In such cases, the question becomes relevant: how to get rid of ants in an apartment? These small insects are ubiquitous. After all, you can only see working individuals, and the nest itself is not so easy to find or destroy. If at least a few pieces have been noticed, then you should be wary: you need to start fighting them as early as possible. Most likely, these are scouts who are prowling in search of food. Red ants are most often found, since they cannot live in nature in our climate. Sometimes you can see red or yellow ones. If they find something to profit from, then others will come after them.
Prevention of ants
It is easier to prevent settlement than to remove ants from the apartment forever. This requires prevention, that is, maintaining cleanliness. When the question arises why pests have settled in the house, you need to look around. If single ants appear, you should pay special attention to order, especially in the kitchen.
- Dishes must be washed immediately after eating; surfaces should preferably be wiped with vinegar.
- The trash can must close tightly.
- Sweep or vacuum the floor daily.
- Food should be stored in well-closed containers.
To prevent ants from entering your home, it is worth observing where the insects are coming from. Then seal the cracks, for example, with silicone. You can also install barriers near these loopholes using improvised means: cinnamon or even baby powder with talcum powder. Small pests will be repelled by an unpleasant smell. A small bowl of sugar syrup may also help. The sweet smell will attract ants and they will drown, which means they will not return to the nest to bring others.
How to fight insects?
However, it is not always possible to notice in time that these small insects have infested. Then you need to remove the ants from the house. The main reasons for problems encountered in this process is that they usually have more than one nest. And these anthills can be located in several apartments at once. Therefore, the best result will be if you fight the scourge together with your neighbors.
Red ants are most often found in apartments. But most remedies are effective against any type of them. You can remove them either by contacting one of the city pest control services, or yourself - using insecticides or folk recipes. Of course, fighting them will take some time.
If everything is clear with calling exterminator specialists, then choosing a remedy for house ants can be difficult. But the more the colony grows, the more decisively it is necessary to fight. It is often not possible to physically destroy an anthill. Firstly, it is difficult to find. Secondly, it may be located in a hard-to-reach place. An ant hole can pass through, for example, many tiles in the kitchen. Even if you find the entrance, it is possible that you will need to seriously ruin the repairs before you can get to the nest. That is why the fight against small saboteurs often involves using a product with a poison that will also affect other pests through the foraging ants.
How to use aerosols, gels and other products?
Effective products that will help remove ants from your apartment: “Raptor”, Raid in the form of a spray or trap, “Dohloks”, “Kombat”, as well as special gels. Aerosols against insects are inconvenient because they must be sprayed directly onto the nests. But they give quick results; the main thing is to find the pest population. Such an effective product can be found in almost any hardware store.
When working with spray, you should follow safety rules. Although most of them contain substances that are practically safe for humans, in high concentrations they can be harmful to health. Therefore, there should be no strangers or animals in the room. You should spray the poison while wearing a mask or respirator. Dishes and food, if the procedure is carried out in the kitchen, must be taken out. Just in case, it’s worth removing and indoor plants. An aerosol is used along the ant paths and on the anthill itself. If it could not be found, then there will be no result. Only a certain number of insects will die, but their population will soon recover.
Special gels against insects show good results. They attract ants, which not only poison themselves, but also carry them into the nest, infecting the rest of its inhabitants. Thanks to this prolonged effect, the anthill will be empty in a few days. The gel retains its consistency for a long time, so if new small pests come from neighbors, they will also be poisoned. The substance should be applied along ant trails and other places where they are most often noticed. To keep people safe, manufacturers make the gel bitter so children and pets won't eat it.
You can also fight insects with the help of powders and special pencils. They are available and easy to use: draw lines near pest habitats. There is no need to rush to wipe away crayon marks.
Also, poison for ants is contained in special traps. This good remedy, if the ants have not yet settled in the room, but from time to time you can notice single individuals. Traps look like boxes with one or several exits. There is a poisonous bait inside.
There is no point in setting sticky traps, since the ants will return until the nest disappears.
Folk recipes
The fight against these insects is also possible with the help of homemade products. They are also quite effective, especially if there are not very many ants yet. If everything is done correctly, you can get rid of small pests forever, even if you have to spend some time on it.
- Borax leads to guaranteed poisoning of ants. A teaspoon of boric acid is dissolved in a glass of water and sugar is added to sweeten it. The resulting mixture is applied to the areas where most insects are found. They not only receive the poison themselves, but also bring it to the nest.
- Yeast is another effective folk remedy that is used to remove ants from the apartment. Fresh or dried yeast is mixed with sweet water, which makes the mixture attractive to insects. Once eaten, the yeast swells, thus destroying pests.
- You can make bait from meat. To do this, mix the minced meat with boric acid and place it where the ants accumulate. But you should be extremely careful if there are animals in the house. They must not be allowed to swallow the poison.
- If you need to get rid of red ants in your apartment, you can try the following recipe. Boil 3 eggs and the same amount of medium-sized potatoes under the lid over low heat. You need to peel the eggs while they are still warm. The yolk should be separated from the white and mashed together with the potatoes until pureed. Add a bag of dry boric acid and sugar. Then make small balls and place them next to paths and other favorite places of insects. Important: this procedure must be carried out for the first time at the beginning of the waning moon, and repeated 10 days later. At the same time, it is necessary to prevent pests from having access to water; the sink in the kitchen and bathroom must be thoroughly wiped before going to bed, and the rags must be dried.
Red ants in an apartment, just like red ants and any others, cause a lot of inconvenience. For example, if you accidentally leave food on the kitchen counter, it will most likely become unedible. In addition to the discomfort that such a neighborhood causes, it can also pose a health threat. The reasons for this: insects travel throughout the house, which means they are carriers of bacteria. So the sooner you start fighting them, the better.
Lose weight easily (results in 25 days)
Why persistent dieting DOES NOT BRING visible results, but only leads to frustration and depression, and how to still lose weight in order to:
- Get your husband's attention back or find a new man.
- Feel the envious glances of friends and colleagues again.
- Believe in yourself, feel slim and desired.
- Don't be shy to go to the cinema or to a cafe with your friends.
- They are not shy about posting photos from vacation or with children on social networks.
Burn fat specifically in problem areas
