Those who have come across a small red scourge know that killing ants and getting them out of an apartment are two different things. You can crush and trap tiny pests for as long as you like, but their number in the room will not decrease from this.
Or you can effectively scare them away, but after stopping the use of repellents, find that house ants return in the shortest possible time, and their destruction will seem less and less promising.
However, the destruction of ants in the apartment is possible. What is important here is not even the quality and quantity of special equipment, but the good organization of the whole process and the coordination of the actions of the fighters themselves.
So what should this process look like?
An overview of ant extermination
Before you destroy domestic ants, you must:
- try to find out where the nest with their colony may be. If you destroy it, then the worker ants are likely to die out fairly quickly. Such an anthill will not necessarily be located in the apartment itself: it can be located in a neighboring room, in the front door, even on the street - in the southern regions, and the ants themselves enter the apartment in search of food.
Important!
There may be several nests and colonies of ants in the house. Sometimes up to 12-13 anthills are destroyed by exterminators in one front door!
- Coordinate their actions with neighbors, especially with those in whose apartments there may be colonies.Ideally, ants should be destroyed by joint efforts.
- If you do not resort to the services of professional exterminators, then at least find out at the local SES how they poison parasites. Each city and even district has its own populations of ants, some of which are resistant to various insecticides. Even before you destroy the ants in the house, you should decide on the exterminating agent itself.
And, of course, the destruction of red ants should be carried out as diligently and on a large scale as possible: laziness and hope for "maybe" here will be the main reasons for failure.
Review
“I got ants about a year ago. To be honest, I poisoned them with everything that was on sale. They are poisoned, disappear for a month, then appear again. It is clear that they live with drunken neighbors, and they feed at my house. Then I found out that the whole site was suffering from this evil spirits. I went, agreed with everyone, we chipped in money, poisoned both our apartments and the drunkard’s, and we didn’t meet with ants again. ”
Alla, Moscow
Means and methods for the destruction of ants
If the ants' locations have been calculated, and all the tenants of the house are ready to destroy the ants in their apartment, basement, and even on the dryers, it's time to take the right practical steps. There are several methods for the destruction of red ants:
- if an anthill is available, pour it with boiling water, denatured alcohol or turpentine, vacuum it, or treat it with a powerful modern insecticide. It is simple, inexpensive, but rarely succeeds: ants prefer to settle in very secluded places.
- It is possible to carry out a total treatment of the apartment and the premises adjacent to it with an insecticidal aerosol, dust, or gel.This is always quite effective, but in the case of ants, the result can be probabilistic: even if one anthill dies out, a new one from the other side of the house will soon grow in its place.
Important!
The more neighbors who live in adjoining apartments simultaneously pickle their houses with reliable insecticides, the less likely the ants will survive.
- Or you can call a team of exterminators - from the SES or a private company. In terms of efficiency, this method is far superior to the independent destruction of red house ants using aerosols, gels and crayons, and, moreover, is less troublesome. But its price is not affordable for everyone...
It is practically impossible to exterminate domestic ants by freezing or warming up the room (as, for example, they do when removing bedbugs): if the anthill is out of reach, then frost and heat will not destroy all its inhabitants. If the colony is achievable, it is wiser to destroy it mechanically using the same vacuum cleaner.
But if it is not possible to mechanically destroy the anthill, and the price of pest control services bites, you should take up alternative reliable means to fight ants.
Means for self-destruction of ants
In order to lime domestic ants, today you can use a large number of means. But not all of them are effective enough. The best results in the hands of homegrown fighters show the following:
- Insecticide aerosols - their charm lies in the fact that with air they will penetrate into any cracks, and they will definitely reach the insects that live in the treated room.But if insects live outside the sprayed area and visit the apartment only in search of provisions, it will not work to kill all domestic ants with such means.
- Dusts are good because they penetrate into the anthill on the legs and bodies of insects that manage to run through them. Here, hitting the target is even more reliable, but using dusts requires patience: you need to wait until the ants get dirty in the agent and poison their neighbors themselves. This may take several weeks.
On a note
Well-known ant pencils work on the same principle (for example, the popular cockroach crayon Masha). In fact, these are the same dusts, only with a slightly different consistency.
- Poisoned baits, including recipes based on boric acid and borax, yeast, and powerful modern insecticidal gels. The worker ants themselves diligently carry them to the colony to treat the queen and heirs. In terms of efficiency and speed of action, these funds are comparable to dusts.
Other means will not help to remove ants from the house. Traps designed to destroy ants that have fallen into them do not affect the viability of the colony in any way, and pseudo-traps, from which insects contaminated with insecticide carry poison to the anthill, are typical dusts with bait.
Ultrasonic and magnetic resonance repellers do not work against ants.
And folk remedies based on strong-smelling herbs can, at best, scare ants away from where they are. It will be possible to drive ants out of the house for a while with their help, but it is unlikely to destroy them.
Ant Gels
Ant poisons in the form of gels appeared on the market relatively recently, but have already managed to become more popular than most other means. The gels are very effective - the worker ants eat them themselves, but do not get poisoned immediately, but manage to carry a drop of sweet poison to the anthill, where they will please the rest of the inhabitants.
Insecticide gels are also easy to use - they are simply applied in dotted lines to the areas where the ants move most frequently. In addition, insect repellents in the form of gels are relatively safe - they use insecticides that are easily neutralized by the human body and warm-blooded animals without consequences.
Finally, gels are available: one package of gel, which is enough to kill ants in one apartment, and depending on the prestige of the brand, costs from 100 to 200 rubles.
The most popular gels today are Brownie, Anteater, Globol, Raptor, Sturm, Face, Dohlox.
Aerosols from ants
It is among aerosols that today it is customary to look for the most effective ant exterminator. Aerosol products are good because, when used correctly, they can get rid of ants in just half a day. And along the way, they also remove the rest of the evil spirits, up to bedbugs and fleas.
However, aerosols are difficult to apply. When processing an apartment, there should not be anyone in it, including pets. The aerosol itself must be used to treat the maximum number of surfaces, including baseboards and the inner surfaces of bedside tables.
After processing, the apartment should stand for several hours, and after their expiration, it is necessary to carry out a thorough wet cleaning in it.It is important not to wash those surfaces with which the owners rarely come into contact in everyday life: if they stand for several days with the applied product, the likelihood of a final reliable result will be higher.
The real stars among these funds are Raptor, Raid, Get and Kombat. The cost of one cylinder is 200-400 rubles, and it is enough on average for one room in an apartment.
Dusts and pencils
It is easy to use these products: the powder simply crumbles in secluded places where insects like to visit. Then they themselves smear themselves in it, try to remove it with their jaws and get poisoned. Perhaps they will do it already in the anthill. And pencils can even smear vertical surfaces.
Buying insecticidal dusts and pencils is also quite simple. Chalk Mashenka today costs about 15 rubles, and the most famous dust - boric acid - is even cheaper.
It is possible to prepare peculiar traps on the basis of dusts: poison is poured into the plastic lid from the jar, and honey or jam is dripped in the center, directly into the powder. All the ants that have passed through the insecticidal field and eaten honey, as well as their fellows, who are ready to share the delicacy, are not residents.
Review
“When I saw ants in the house, I didn’t even think about it. I bought boric acid, poured it around a bucket, under the sink, near the toilet, and forgot about them. Probably, these were scouts who immediately got hurt and did not even tell their people that they had found a new apartment.
Irina, Moscow
However, you should not count on the rapid destruction of domestic ants in the apartment with the help of these means: at best, the ants will die out in a few weeks. But the process of their destruction will be very simple.
There are a lot of well-known ghosts.This is Feverfew, and Clean House, and Brownie - they are all quite effective and inexpensive.
Call for special teams
Contacting special services is rightfully considered the most effective way to destroy ants. Specialists use reliable and high-quality insecticides, they know well where the ants themselves meet and where they most often make a nest.
The cost of processing the premises depends on the region and the promotion of the company itself. For example, the destruction of ants in St. Petersburg will cost about 2,500 rubles for a one-room apartment, and in Volgograd - about 1,600 rubles.
Review
“No matter how much we took out the ants, how many means we did not try, they disappeared only after calling the SES. The guys arrived, sprayed the whole apartment from special cylinders, turned all the furniture upside down. Do you know where the anthill was? Under the laminate in the bedroom! I had to corny tear out a piece, destroy the entire nest and cover it again. But one day, 2,200 rubles, and the ants have been gone for two years.”
Alevtina, Kazan
Before the arrival of the brigade itself, you usually need to prepare the apartment well. To do this, furniture is moved away from the walls, carpets are removed, cabinets are opened - specialists need to be given access to the places where ants are most likely to be present. And after processing the apartment, it must be carefully cleaned and ventilated to get rid of insecticides on the walls and from the aroma in the air.
Important!
Each ant extermination service uses modern professional poisons. The specialists themselves must instruct the tenant in detail about the safety rules after processing the premises, and the tenant must strictly observe these rules.
Mechanical destruction of the anthill
It is physically possible to destroy an anthill only by knowing where it is and having access to it. Usually these conditions are not met, but if luck smiled at the owner of the premises, ants can be destroyed as follows:
- vacuum cleaner - it is important only then to shake the filter into the toilet so that it does not become another home for pests
- boiling water - if it does not threaten to damage the furniture
- hands - although it is disgusting, but reliable.
It must be understood that the destruction of the queen of pharaoh ants will not ensure the guaranteed disappearance of insects from the life of the owner of the premises: one of the fertilized females, just waiting for this moment, can become the new queen of the colony. Therefore, if you destroy the ants, then all at once.
But after the successful extermination of pests, it is necessary to consider reliable preventive protection of the premises from them. For this:
- around the entrance doors, windows outside and inside the ventilation ducts, it is necessary to draw solid barrier strips with insecticidal pencils.
- In places where ants may appear, keep dry leaves of wormwood or tansy.
- Maintain cleanliness in the room, regularly clean, wipe furniture in the kitchen and throw out garbage. It is garbage and unsanitary conditions that most attract small red pests.
In general, when fighting ants, you can count on the complete success of the event, but it is only important to approach this process with full seriousness and responsibility. Ants are much more tenacious than it might seem at first glance!
Useful video: how to get rid of ants in the apartment
An example of how pharaoh ants attack apartment residents
