Finding the most effective treatment for ants depends on the specific type you have invading your house. Carpenter ants are commonly found around homes in wooded areas. They don’t carry bait back to their nests,Being Smarter Than Carpenter Ants Made Possible Through Pest Control Done Fast and Natural Articles so you have to kill them at the source.
The one reason, above all others, for getting rid of carpenter ants is to prevent further structural damage do your home. Carpenter ant colonies expand ever outward, producing what are called satellite colonies. These satellite colonies will eventually mature into hundreds of members and will seek to create more satellite colonies. So, you see the pattern; once carpenter ants have established themselves in a home, constant progression of damage and size of the colony are inevitable. Usually they have made their nest in wood that was already rotted and probably needed to be replaced anyway, but sometimes they will nest in perfectly dry and healthy wood.
Therefore use a natural component that is non toxic to animals and humans but highly effective on insects. In fact it is so effective that when Pest control sprinkled it can do the fast killing of carpenter ants.
Diatomaceous earth
It is ground into a very fine powder (finer than talcum powder) and when sprinkled where hard bodied insects like carpenter ants frequent it seems to be magnetically drawn to their bodies and the fine powder then absorbs lipids from the exoskeleton of the insect and they dehydrate and die. Because it is also a mild abrasive it causes minute cuts to the exoskeleton and facilitates or speeds up the dehydration process. It is effective as an insecticide on most insects with a hard exoskeleton, and presents no harm to pets or humans. If you want to prevent them in the first place, a sensible way is to purchase some diatomaceous earth (DE), sprinkle them and their concentrations when they appear, and then do the same the following year and the years after that. DE is cheap and very effective and totally non toxic. It is easy to find by doing a search on the internet or most local garden stores will have a supply. We prefer the food grade variety and you might want to consider an applicator to go with it because of its fine consistency it can be hard to properly apply otherwise.
Boric Acid
Boric acid is a colorless white powder that is a mild antiseptic, but certainly not a problem to the health of your family even if you touch it with ungloved hands. It is found in nature in some volcanic environments near Tuscany and Nevada. Boric acid and its salts are found in seawater and plants including almost all fruits.
Of course, you need to keep it away from small children as it is poisonous if ingested or inhaled in large quantities, but it is probably the least toxic form of insect bait you can use around your home with the exception of diatomaceous earth, which unfortunately doesn’t work as as quickly for large ants
Investigate
Getting rid of carpenter ants from your home is simple enough if you can find out where the Carpenter Ants are coming from. If the colony is large enough, nesting carpenter ants will actually make a crinkling or crunching noise. If detecting a carpenter ant nest by sound isn’t possible, you may want to try setting up a sugar or honey bait, and following them back to their nest during the night.
Proper lawn care, or lawn care the way suburbanites do it, is perhaps the surest natural way of controlling carpenter ant populations. Removing dead stumps from your yard, keeping wood piles away from your home, clearing brush, tree branches, and other foliage that are making contact with your home, keeping your lawn trimmed, making sure your home’s wooden structure doesn’t make contact with the dirt: these are all things that can be done to prevent a carpenter ant infestation. Carpenter ants will travel upwards of 200 yards from the original nest; keep this in mind when deciding how much lawn you should tend to.…
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