Controlling ants in the yard and house

    Initially the ants ignored the Raid ant bait. After several hours they gradually started taking an interest in it and this morning seem to be concentrating fully on it. What you can't see in the image are dozens and dozens more ants inside the actual bait case. They'll carry this bait back to the colony, feed it to the other ants and, at least in theory, kill the entire nest.

    After doing a little research on Raid ant baits, something I should have done before I even bought them, it appears that the inert ingredients in the baits is peanut butter pricescope.com/idealbb/view.asp?topicID=62750. That's not good. That's not good at all. Buddy and Dixie LOVE peanut butter, and while I'm certainly not setting these things out where my dogs can get at them, there's always that possibility.

    No more Raid ant baits.

Ants 1 - Jeff 0

    I'm adding something new to the ant killing arsenal this year: Terro Ant Killer. A 2-ounce bottle of this liquid ant bait costs $3.97 at Lowes hardware. The active ingredient is Sodium Tetraborate Decahydrate, or Borax as it's more commonly known, a mineral with a wide range of uses including, believe it or not, use as a food additive for humans! (Fortunately banned as a food additive in the United States).

So far I haven't been able to find out what the inactive ingredients are but I'm still looking. If anyone knows, please drop me a line.

    There's no doubt that ants like this stuff. My ants do anyway. Lay a few drops down in a high ant traffic area, anywhere in a high ant traffic area, and within a few minutes they're swarming all over it. On the box it says "Complete control may take up to 2 weeks," yet I've gone through five of these 2-ounce bottles in the last 2 weeks and they just seem to keep coming. Are there fewer ants? It's difficult to say. The idea behind Terro ant killer is the same as Raid ant baits. The ants eat it, take it back to the nest and feed it to the queen. The queen dies and the nest dies with her. No more ants. That's the idea anyway. In the 2 weeks I've been using it I have to admit that there do seem to be fewer ants. They're definitely still around though. This probably has more to do with the seriousness of my ant problem than the effectiveness of this product.

    The image at right shows ants swarming around a line of Terro liquid ant killer. They look like miniature pigs lining up at a food trough.

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