Ants In My Kitchen

This has been a very cold winter here in the midwest. Especially here in Kansas City. You might think during that the cold spell we just had … what could possibly live. Temperatures were below zero for weeks! Well not very much, however, Ants will survive. They burrow down deeper to avoid the hard freeze. After the weather or season changes back to spring, you start seeing mounds of dirt pushed up in your lawn with ants going in and out.

It wont take long for the ants to pick up were they left off. In your kitchen and around your sink is there favorite places. They remember. A trail of ants scurring across your sink counter into small cracks in your grout or along the floor leading to your patio door.

What Ants Are They?

House ants—Ordorous, Argentine, Pharaoh, and little black ants are normally the ants you on your kitchen counter topes. These ants are so small that it is hard to seal them out. They can enter through cracks in in the windows, under doorways, and up the sides of homes by way of sidings. What ever it takes to reach its food supply… they will find away to enter.

You make a common mistake by spraying the ants. It may kill them, however, you did not kill the colony. Were there was one, you can bet the colony is nearby. After you kill of the ants on your colony, the others will follow the pheromonal trail right back to the same place you killed their scouts. You have to kill the colony which houses the queen ant. Her job is to lay eggs and grow the colony. She survives by sending the worker ants back to your home to bring more food to her kingdom.

Read on to learn how to get rid of kitchen ants permanently.

identify all points of entry

The ants mentioned above are pretty simple ants to track. They tend to trail in a uniform order. The usually are in a line straight to the food source and back to their nest. You will notice the ants can take you to cracks in the kitchen floor or window seals that are broken are cracked. Don’t fix the entry points yet until you read this!

Where is the nest?

Watch the ants closely. Bring the Kid out in you. They will literally carry the crumbs back to their nest. Wait for the ants return to the source with their crumbs, and try to spy where they go after exiting the kitchen. Tracking their movement will sometimes lead you directly to the nest where the rest of the colony lives.

You may notice your nest finding journey will take you outdoors, maybe in the ground or in a tree. The nest is usually a mound of dirt if it is in the ground depending what type of ant you are dealing with.

Once you find the nest outside, destroy it with a pesticide that will destroy the colony (like Harris Home Pest Control—Amazon). You do not want to use repellent sprays as they will send an alarm to the ants and cause them to move in every direction. A non repellent spay would be much better as they will not be warned and detect the spray.

Another way to destroy the ants is a half gallon of hot boiling water. Just pour it over the nest and the nest will collapse, killing the ants in the process. If the ants are in your walls then you may want to use a powder such as Boric Acid or dematiaceous earth ( available on Amazon)

I like boric acid because it is safe around humans compared to other insecticides. All though it is safe, please store it like any other insecticide. Always read the label for proper use and storage.