Major ant invasion, help!

[Hannah'sMommy]

How can we safely get rid of ants that are literally taking over our house? My guess is that they are living under the house and maybe even in the walls. I want to spray outside and under the house because there are so many of them, but I'm concerned about safety for our 5 month DD. Any suggestions??

Oh, and when I say taking over, I mean they have established colonies inside of our modem, router, and now even the charger for our electric toothbrushes. This is way more than a few ants invading a cupboard! We've gotten rid of the colonies, just to find a new spot they are trying to make a home out of.

My thought is that when we go visit family in a few weeks to have the exterminator come and spray that weekend since we'll be gone for a couple of nights... Would that even be safe for our DD?

[DevaMajka]

Moving to MHM

[childsplay]

You could try cornmeal, although you may have too many now for it to be effective. The ants eat it. It expands, and they 'blow up'.
You can also buy ant liquid drops. You drip little blobs under tour radiators, in the corners of baseboards, anywhere they can get in, it dries quickly but the ants eat it (or lick it maybe), or track it back to the colony, anyway, it works and you only apply it like once every few months or something. I think it's called Ant Out?
Good luck!

[insahmniak]

We've had a big little ant problem in the past. I think we'll battle them every year. We mix borax and sugar and sprinkle it where they've been. This helps.

In case you are skeeved out and are cleaning up a particular spot, you can try what I've done. I wipe up and crush all ants that are present. (This part really stinks.) Then I get some hot water and put a few drops of peppermint oil in it and wipe the place down really well. This seems to repel them for quite some time. I think the peppermint oil irritates them.

[gillibean]

We had an ant infestation a couple of years ago. The kids found all these 'queen ants' which were actually apparently males with wing that were sent to find a new place to nest. DS was even pinched by one. Luckily we found the colony before they established a second one and we sprayed it. Then we got some ant bait to eliminate any that weren't around when we sprayed the nest.

Honestly, I don't think that the ant bait alone would have worked for the infestation that we had and I was really concerned that they would make multiple nests in our walls. At least the one we found wasn't hidden behind drywall. Normally I don't like pesticides and I don't mind a few bugs here and there but these ants were just too much. We had tried a few more 'natural' remedies with no success so I was very grateful that the pesticide was an option (as bad as I felt about polluting our home).

From the research that I remember doing, most of the chemicals used to kill insects have a fairly short half-life and they don't work on mammals the same way they work on insects. Perhaps ask the exterminators what chemicals they use and do some research about those specific ones.

Good luck!

[elsie]

When we had a bad case, I got Raid the ant traps where they take the bait back to the nest. A few days late I saw the queen doing her death crawl across the floor and did not see an ant since. I put the traps in the major pathways the ants used to be sure a few went in to get the poison. I did not worry about the kids getting it since it was just a few traps placed out of the way and there was no poison being sprayed around. To really make ants leave, you need to kill the queen.

[mumkimum]

We've had 1 or 2 situations similar to gillibean. What we've done is clean wherever they are with a citrus-cleanser (peppermint is good too) which we spray on any ants we see to kill them, then douse the area they are and where we think they enter with diatomaceous earth, which we keep around for at least a few weeks before vacuuming the bulk of it away.

I do think spraying outdoors (like the perimeter of your house) is a decent idea if it's a major problem, and is going to be a lot less problematic than spraying indoors, obviously. We talked with some pest companies about recommendations for less-problematic chemicals for outdoor use when we treated and they've done just fine for keeping the ants under control.

[sparkly]

Our last house had ants...I made a spray with, I think I remember correctly, half water and half white vinegar, with cinnamon essential oil added. I put it in a spray bottle. It killed them instantly. They would still come back for a little while, but eventually they stopped coming in.