CATDOLL : CATDOLL: There are a lot of ants in my house. How can I best get rid of them all?

Ants are sensitive to temperature and are active mostly in hot weather. They like sweet foods such as cakes, honey, maltose, brown sugar, eggs, fruit cores, meat skins, dead insects, etc. They can identify roads and move very quickly. If individual worker ants die, their bodies will be transported back to the ant nest. However, they cannot tolerate hunger. Without food and water, half of the spikelets will die after four days and nights.

Experts suggest that household ants can be prevented and controlled by first soaking them in boiling water and then putting washing powder into the ditch to block them. Sprays that kill cockroaches and mosquitoes can also be used. These drugs are effective in killing small red ants. However, small red ants are semi-social insects. General sprays can only kill worker ants that leave the nest in the group. The queen ants and ant kings, which are breeding machines, are still breeding crazily in the nest. A queen ant can give birth to 600 small ants per second, so it is ideal to take collective action on the whole building to kill ants. The best way is to choose a poison bait that is palatable and has no effect on ants. After the worker ants carry the poison bait back, they can poison the ant king, queen ants and larvae in the nest and kill them, thus destroying the entire nest.

Use the characteristics of ants to eliminate them:

Ants often hang out in kitchens with oily food. You can use this feature to kill them. Before going to bed at night, move all food to a place where ants cannot reach. Then put a piece of fat pork on the ground and prepare a bottle of boiling water. The next morning, the ants will gather on the fat pork and enjoy the meal. Do not scare them away, but kill them immediately with boiling water. Do this a few times and you can kill them all.

■Indoor ant species and their control methods

The harm of indoor ants to homes is often ignored. According to investigation, indoor ants mainly include small yellow house ants, big-headed ants, Rocky road ants and stink ants. They often build nests on the roadside, corners and cracks in the wall. The main ways of harm are stealing food, biting and spreading bacteria. According to their activity characteristics, some physical and chemical methods can be used for prevention and control, such as blocking the activity route and blocking the nest. If conditions permit, biological hormones can also be used for prevention and control.

With the rapid development of our urban construction, the living environment of ants has changed dramatically, and they have gradually adapted to the densely built and densely populated urban environment, and often invade indoors to find food and build nests. Since indoor ants can contaminate food, damage buildings, spread bacteria, and bite humans, they can cause certain harm to human life. In order to better prevent and control this harm, we must understand the types and habits of indoor ants, and then propose some effective methods based on specific situations.

Materials and methods:

After investigating and counting common household insect pests, we found that there are four main types of ants: small yellow house ants, big-headed ants, Rocky road ants and stink ants. Through the analysis of the characteristics of these four types of ants, although their harm is far less than that of cockroaches and flies, they are still a hidden danger to homes. Therefore, in view of their characteristics of living in caves and leaving special chemical odors on their activity paths, the following methods can be used to remove them:

1. Wipe with a damp cloth:

If you find one or more rows of ants moving around, wipe them off with a damp cloth and drown them in a basin of detergent water;

2. Washing powder drain barrier:

Since ants will drown once they enter the detergent water, this method can be used to protect a certain area;

3. Flooding:

That is, flood the ant nest with water, which is more suitable for ants that nest in flower pots;

4. Chemical control:

Dust: Usually, inhalable dust such as silicic acid (silicon dioxide) powder is used to cause ants to lack water in their bodies and die;

5. Silicate mealworm pyrethroid powder mixture:

This method is an improvement on the above method and can shorten the killing time, but you should avoid inhaling the dust yourself or inhaling the dust into the room;

Chemical spray: Spraying chemicals around the entrance of the ant nest and on the ant trail can directly kill the ants.

This method is prone to environmental pollution and resistance. The most commonly used agents are as follows:

Spray 500-1000 times dilution of 90% or more trichlorfon stock solution;

Spray 50% dichlorvos EC or 80% dichlorvos EC at 1000-1500 times dilution or 2000-3000 times dilution;

0.1% pyrethrin kerosene solvent spray, etc.

These methods have good effects and are quick to take effect, but they are not thorough, difficult to eradicate, and can easily cause environmental pollution and resistance.

6. Poison bait:

Poison bait is a mixture of chemical agents and food bait that ants like to eat. According to the ant's trophallaxis, after a worker ant eats the poison bait, as long as it does not die within a short period of time, it can bring the poison bait into the ant nest, causing the death of other individuals, usually within seven days. However, ant pupae do not eat, so they may survive, making the ant removal incomplete.

7. Juvenile hormone analogue bait:

That is, juvenile hormone analogues, such as Chlorfluazuron and Methoprene, are added to the bait. The hormone concentration is generally 0.6% to 1.5% of the bait weight.

8. Burn egg shells and grind them into powder. Sprinkle them in the corners or near ant nests to kill ants. If there are ants on the closet, put some fragrant vegetables such as coriander and celery to drive away the ants. Put some walnut leaves, tobacco, and peppercorns in places where ants often appear to drive away ants.

9. Lemongrass essential oil is particularly effective against ants.

10. Ants are afraid of charcoal. You know that black charcoal from burning wood? Just make a few lines on the edge.

11. Just add a few broken leeks to the sugar bowl to keep away ants.

12. Put some water in an unwanted perfume bottle and place it on the floor next to the water dispenser. This will keep ants away from the dispenser.

13. Sprinkle talcum powder (powder for prickly heat) on the places where ants walk, and you will not see ants in a few days.

14. Ants are afraid of the smell of rubber bands, so just tie the rubber bands to the legs of a table or a can.

15. If there are ants in the closet, you can put some fragrant vegetables such as coriander and celery to drive away the ants.

16. Dilute the detergent and apply it directly to the route that ants often use. Let it dry naturally and do not wipe it clean with water.

17. Add a few drops of lavender essential oil to the water you use to mop the floor and ants will be eliminated from your home.

18. Grind camphor balls into powder and sprinkle it in places where ants often appear. It is very effective.

19. Cut a 1 cm wide rubber strip from a discarded bicycle ring and nail it to the door frame and the window frame between the glass window and the screen with shoe nails and pins. Since nailing the rubber strip, no red ants have entered the house. Although the rubber strip cannot completely eliminate the red ants, it can effectively prevent the infestation of red ants, so it is worth a try.

20. Placing Sichuan peppercorns in areas where ants are present can drive away ants, but it will not completely eliminate them.

Additional information:

Ants' living habits 1. Housing: Ants usually build nests underground, and the underground nests are very large. They have good drainage and ventilation measures. Generally, worker ants are responsible for building the nests. The entrance and exit are mostly a small arched mound with a hole in the middle like a volcano. Secondly, there are holes for ventilation, and each room in the nest is clearly classified. Warm and moist soil is their favorite. They usually live in dry areas, but it is little known that they can barely survive in water for two weeks.

2. Lifespan: Ants have a long lifespan. Worker ants can live from a few weeks to a few years, and queen ants can live for several years or even ten years. An ant nest can grow in one place for 1 to 10 years. However, most newly born queen ants will die!

3. Food habits: The food habits of ants can be simply divided into the following categories:

Meat eater, omnivore with a meat-oriented diet, omnivore with a vegetarian diet, and vegetarian diet.

Meat: It is best to use insects as the main food. The proportion of pure carnivorous ants is relatively small, but each type of carnivorous ants has different preferences for food, so not all insects can be used as food for all carnivorous ants. Therefore, when raising them, you need to prepare the insects that the ants like to eat, otherwise it will often cause the ants to mistakenly think that they have enough food, but they will not eat or starve to death. Therefore, if you cannot prepare the food that the ants like, it will be very frustrating to raise them.

Omnivorous and carnivorous: Omnivorous and carnivorous ants are more common. They can eat both vegetarian and nonvegetarian food. However, nonvegetarian food is more likely to attract them. They are not picky about insects and generally accept all kinds of food. When feeding, in addition to insects, you can also feed them with animal protein. Examples of foods that can be used are as follows: mainly carnivorous and dead insects, plus fruits and honeydew. When feeding, you can feed insects, fish (can be eaten raw), cooked pork, cooked chicken, etc.

Omnivorous and partially vegetarian: There are many overlaps between omnivorous and partially carnivorous ant species. The only difference is that when insect carcasses and sweets appear at the same time, omnivorous and partially vegetarian ants are more likely to be attracted to the sweets.

Vegetarianism: Pure vegetarian ants are not common among all ant species. Some ants only eat certain special plants or fruit juices. Leaf-cutter ants in foreign countries even bring leaves back to their nests to grow fungi and use fungi as their only food. So raising these ants is just like raising pure carnivorous ants. You must make sure that you can prepare food first, otherwise it will be very frustrating.

4. Food intake: The key is "don't overfeed", especially for those ants that carry as much food as they can and then return to the nest to enjoy it slowly. If you feed too much, the food will easily expire and become moldy and rotten in the nest, which will easily attract small insects that mainly feed on carrion to live in the nest. At that time, they will reproduce in the nest and it will be detrimental to the appearance. If there are too many small insects, it may also endanger the safety of the ant larvae.

In addition, if the food source is live insects, parasites or mites that have previously laid eggs on the food may grow on them. The mites will then multiply like a plague in the nest and attach themselves to every ant and larva. The parasitized ants may be covered with multiple mites at the same time and usually do not live long. This also creates a fatal crisis for the entire colony.

5. Route identification: Ants are colony insects that live in groups. They each have their own home. Most ants' homes are below the ground, where they cannot easily find abundant food. When the weather is sunny and warm, we often see groups of ants busy crawling on the ground.

If you observe carefully, or if you sprinkle some bread crumbs in front of them, you will see that when they arrive at the food, they start to carry the delicious food you prepared for them. If one ant cannot carry it, two, three, or more ants will come up and carry it together. When they get the food, they will crawl back home in an orderly manner along the way they came, dragging the food back to store for later delicious meals. This is the effect of pheromones.

Spread newspapers on the ground, sprinkle sweets on them (such as DOVE chocolate, anyway, it has to be your favorite) to attract ants, and then kill them together. After a few times, there will be no trace of ants in your home. Trick 2: Sprinkle cornmeal on the ground to "invite" ants to move. After a few days, you will find that the ants in your home are gone.

Put rubber in places where ants are present. Ants cannot stand the smell of rubber and will automatically move away.

The quickest way to remove them is to spray them with insecticide, and the most complete solution is to remove food residues from the room.

Ants are omnivorous insects that like to forage in groups and have relatively fixed routes. You should first find the ants' entrances and exits, and then spray and kill them in a concentrated manner.

Sugar and cake residues spilled at home should be cleaned up in time, otherwise it will easily attract ants.

Ants have extremely strong reproductive capacity. Once they build a nest in the house, it is difficult to get rid of it.

If termites that are much larger than small ants appear in your home, you must go to the local termite prevention and control center and ask professionals to come and deal with it. Termites are rampant and can lead to serious consequences such as building collapse.

Tips for getting rid of ants include:

1. Put some peppercorns in places where ants are active, especially in cupboards, drawers, etc. When ants smell the peppercorns, they can be repelled to a certain extent. It can only have an expelling effect, but it is difficult to completely eliminate them.

2. Sprinkle Jiebing insecticide powder on the ant trail where ants appear. Spray evenly, don't scatter in piles. Ants will slowly die when they climb on the medicine or pass by the medicine. Generally, all ants can be killed in about ten days after spreading Jiebing ant medicine.

3. Find the ant trails or cave bends and pour boiling water directly into them to scald the ants to death.

4. Ants are afraid of the smell of laundry detergent. Dilute the laundry detergent with water to make a solution, and then apply it on the ant trails where the ants move. Allow the laundry detergent solution to dry naturally, which can also remove some ants.

Based on my experience in eliminating ants, I think the most effective method is the second one, using Jiebing's instant insecticide powder to kill ants. Only this method can exterminate ants.

Very useful