The Killing Season: How To Kill Ants

 Rusty

If you’re in the US then chances are good that you had a particularly warm winter this year. Warm winters mean early bug problems and around the Rusty household we’re already experiencing visitors in the form of small black ants.

My preferred way of dealing with them is borax based ant poison, specifically the liquid syrup kind. The recipe I use comes from this site that lists several other borax based poisons as well as useful cleaning products to help discourage further ant visitors.

Here’s the sugar syrup recipe:

2 cups sugar
1 cup hot water
2 Tablespoons Borax

Mix the sugar and the Borax together and then add the water while stirring to dissolve everything into a thick syrup. I like to put this in small paper plates near where I’ve seen the ants entering the house and I rub some of the syrup around the rim of the plate to make sure the ants can get to it. If you want to be really fancy, you can make a little bridge using cardboard so that you can lead them to the doom more efficiently.

This poison won’t kill them right away, so when you see more ants coming to the traps don’t be alarmed. The ants will take the sugary bait back to their nest and it will help to kill the entire colony rather than just the ants you see on your counter. After two or three days the ant activity should die all the way down, and you can remove the traps and clean the area thoroughly. Keep reminding yourself of this, because I know that coming out and seeing the entire plate ringed by ants is pretty gross but it’s worth it to have a long term solution.