When you think of an infestation of ants, you immediately think of an army of ants crawling on your kitchen counter going toward a delicious slice of bread – and how you’re going to place one of the best ant traps. While it is true that ants often make their way into homes, it doesn’t mean that if they are outside, they can’t cause problems to your house.
Act in advance
If you don’t want ants in your home, then you have to address the outdoors first; that is if you see a colony of ants in your garden, you have to take some safety measures as the chances of them crawling into your home at one point or another is pretty high in such a case. Avoid an infestation before you have to put in even more effort to stop them.
So, if you are outside and you see a bigger number of ants than what you’d consider to be normal for the outdoors, take some action and start preparing for a little war. Here we’ll present to you some of the ways in which you can keep your home safe from them.
The recurring infestation
A lot of homeowners that had to deal with ants have had the same problem: you managed to eliminate the ant infestation in the house but somehow they reappeared a couple of days later. Why is that? Well, it’s because you didn’t eliminate the actual source of home-invaders, the ants that are outside.
Usually, repeated infestations take place because there is an anthill somewhere in your yard that keeps on supplying the little pests that fill your house. Until you will be able to get rid of the source, your house will keep on being invaded. Regardless of how many ants there are in your home, thousands more are hiding in the colony underground.
Those ants in the colony will soon get out and start looking for your house. Even if you think you’ve managed to remove all the ants near your house, keep in mind that a queen can lay thousands of eggs per day so there will be many more returning soon anyway. The only way to really eliminate the ants is to eliminate the ant colony for good.
Don’t worry, it’s much harder to remove the inside ants than the outside ants and there are actually several ways in which you can do so.
Ant baits – can’t resist them
Before you try any of the many ways you can to remove the outdoor ants, the first solution you need to apply is to use some ant bait. Lay out the baits with a little bit of poison that you can find in a specialty shop and when the ants will come and take them away, they’ll end up taking the poison back to the colony.
This will infect the colony and will surely kill many of the ants in the yard with even the queen having a very high chance of dying.
Keep in mind that you can have more than one species of ants in the yard so you should try using some types of bait. Try using the highly popular ones such as sugar baits and the types of baits that are made of grease and protein. This technique will probably remove a great number of ants from your yard.
In case you’ve already tried insecticide and you’ve sprayed it in your yard, it’s advisable to place the bait in a separate area as the smell of the insecticide will make the ants not get too close to the bait and you need them to not feel any danger when they grab the bait.
A piece of good advice is to place the baits pretty evenly around the yard with about 10 to 20 feet between them. It may take a couple of days, but ants will eventually notice it and take the poisonous bait back to their colony. If there are really a lot of ants in the yard, you’ll probably have to place baits again to completely get the job done.
Boiling water
There is also the case that you have more than just one anthill in the yard. In this case, your best option is to use boiling water. Since it will require quite a bit of labor, it’s recommended that you only try this method in case there really is more than just one hill in the yard. In case you’d prefer an eco-friendly way of killing ants, this one is just it.
But why is this option so laborious? Obviously, it’s because you will need a pretty big quantity of water for each of the anthills to be destroyed properly. Take the biggest container you have available (a soup pot will do) and fill it with water. Leave it to boil for a while. Once the water starts boiling, don’t forget to protect your hands when taking the pot.
Take the pot filled with boiling water all the way to the first anthill and pour it onto it. Be very careful when you pour it as you can burn yourself by mistake or kill a big portion of grass around the area where the anthill was placed. Obviously, repeat the process as much as needed until you’ve managed to remove all of the anthills in the yard.
This technique is highly effective as anyone who’s tried it will tell you. But, in order for it to really work completely, you need to pay attention and boil all the anthills in the yard. It’s enough to skip one and the queen will continue to thrive making a future infestation somewhere in the future a matter of “when”, not “if”.
Anthill treatment
Another great way of removing ants from outdoors is to use the anthill treatment that will remove any ants from anywhere around you. Since it involves chemicals, you have to be more careful when you are using this method so you won’t hurt yourself.
Before even trying to use the anthill treatment, you have to pick the product that will work the best in your situation. You can find this treatment available in more than one form with a really popular option being the solid treatment one. You can pick any option you see fitting and if used correctly, you’ll remove any traces of ants from your yard.
It is imperative that you check the weather forecast and do this on a good, sunny day as then it’s when the ants will be roaming around the top of the hill aka they’ll be closer to the treatment that will kill them.
Don’t forget to follow the exact instructions of the ant treatment when you apply it. In case you decide to go with the popular solid treatment, this one is activated by pouring water over it. Once you are done with the treatment, it’s not recommended to ever use the container for anything else than this activity.
Insecticide
We are pretty sure this is the one that you thought about since the get-go since the removal of pests is closely associated with an insecticide. If you want to kill the outdoor ants and be sure they stay away from your house for a long period of time, then clearly using an insecticide is a good option.
The downside of this method is the fact that it can be highly time-consuming for many reasons, but, at least, in the end, you will be sure that there isn’t any ant left behind in your yard.
One of the reasons why using insecticide to kill ants takes so much time is that you have to mow the lawn before applying it. If the grass is cut, the insecticide can reach the soil faster and the ants will meet their maker.
After you’ve done mowing the grass (which is maybe something you needed to do anyway so you get 2 for 1) you can finally use the insecticide. The easiest and fastest way of applying insecticide is to use a liquid or spray option.
In order to make sure that those pesky ants don’t make a return, you will need to repeat this procedure once every month from now on for quite some time because ants have the habit of returning or picking the same places as the first colony since that area must have an advantage over others such as lots of available food – in your home.
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