I noticed a little ant colony under some paving stones in our yard. It didn’t look like much…just a few little ant hills and a few lonely, wandering ants. So I thought it would be the perfect time to try out THIS pin about homemade ant killer.
You mix 1 cup of warm water with 1/2 cup of sugar and 2 tablespoons of Borax, dip some cotton balls into it and lay them out next to where the ants are.
See my little poisoned cotton balls next to those little ant holes?
It didn’t work. At all. A few days after putting out the cotton balls, I enlisted my husband to lift up the pavers to see if all the ants were dead. The scene below those innocent little pavers was something like this:
Ant Armageddon! Ack! There were thousands of them! And even creepier were the ant eggs. Ew! Ew! Ew! Pin Bomb! Pin Bomb! THIS HACK DID NOT WORK!
Comments & Reviews
Let me start out by saying that my husband is licensed for commercial pesticide application and couldn't get our MASSIVE ant colony under control. We have been battling them for the better part of 10 years.
Our ants seem to have refined tastes. This tip didn't do much until I starting leaving the soaked cotton balls out on little platters. (I used the lid from a frozen juice can.) I also had to add a few drops of water as the cotton balls started to dry out. It brought out so many ants that I finally started to realize just how bad the problem was.
For the first time since moving into this house I actually have hope of getting rid of these little guys. Maybe it just depends on which species of ant you have? This was a miracle solution for our problem.
I tried a pin for borax, honey and water to make a liquid solution to be placed in a shallow plastic lid. The ants were attracted to it and a day later (the first time) the ants were gone for 2 weeks. They're back now (or another colony) and this time the day after putting out the solution there are still a couple crawling around my counter the following day. I just have to be careful that its in a place my kids can't get to because it is poisonous if ingested.
You can't use the borax. It has to be borac acid. There's a difference. Look in the pesticide section of Walmart. It's in a white squirt looking bottle with roaches on it. (It will kill tons of things!!)
Use Terro. It attracts the ants for about a week, they eat it and take it back to their colony and all the ants die. I've used this every spring and it's the only thing I've found that truly does work! Good luck!
We don't use cotton balls, but make solution of peanut butter and borax or sugar water borax paste and put them in bottle caps. Last year our house was ransacked with ants. It kept them gone for a few weeks. This year, we got a head start and actually put the solutions outside our house and we have not had the ant problem we had last year.
If you can see the ant hill, pour hot water in it first thing in the morning. The woman who taught me, runs water through her coffee maker then takes the pot out to the ant hill.
If you can't boric acid in Ant Powder works wonders. It also works on roaches.
does it matter the ratio of peanut butter to borax? Thx
This may sound crazy but I use dry grits to control the ants in my yard.
Borax is my GO TO ant killer. The trick is – DO NOT MIX IT WITH ANYTHING!!! I sprinkle straight Borax in the offending areas. The ants carry it away thinking it is sand, eat it, and die. I sprinkle in my windowsills to keep them away. We have had amazing luck doing it this way.
I have always used a little bit of jam or jelly mixed with borax. You have to lure them into taking it back with them and eating it. Borax also works in getting rid of fleas in carpet (don't ask how I know, I do and it wasn't pretty). If you lay it down like carpet refesher and leave it over night it helps to kill them after they hatch, you still need to vacume every day for a week, but you have less of an infestation to start with.