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Ants are notorious fall invaders. The fall weather encourages many insects to come inside but ants are one of the few that can colonize the area and continuously cause problems. Most ants need to have their actual nest in the soil. The queen must be kept protected there so she can reproduce. If the queen dies the individual worker ants can live for several more weeks but they cannot reproduce. There are many different ants that can enter the home. Outdoor ants are usually not a problem and are beneficial as they devour insects and other pests and weed seeds. As they move indoors, they become more of a concern and a nuisance to us. Most nuisance ants nest outdoors and come inside to find food. They invade the home looking for grease, meat, small seeds, sweets, or other food. They transport these back to the colony to feed the queen. Foraging worker ants continue to return to the area where the food is found. Treatment of ants is often most successful if baits are used. Many commercial kinds of baits are available or you can make your own by mixing boric acid with various materials that attracts the ants. Ants prefer something sweet like honey or jelly or something greasy like peanut butter. Jelly or honey mixed with peanut butter makes excellent bait. Add one teaspoon of boric acid per cup of food bait. Boric acid is available at pharmacies or use cockroach powders, such as RoachProof that contain boric acid. Place the bait on small squares of plastic or aluminum foil in areas visited by the ants, but that are not accessible to children. If successful, the bait will kill the ants within 10 days to 2 weeks. These baits are effective against nuisance ants but are not effective against destructive ants such as carpenter ants. If you can find the nest outdoors the simplest remedy is to pour kettle of boiling water over the nest. This kills the queen and the workers will all die after that. Don’t spend your comfortable winter days and evening with invading pests. Time spent preventing these pests from entering the home reduces the nuisance and infestations next year. Controls vary from tree removal, to caulking, to baiting, and in a few, rare instances, spraying. The biggest challenge is finding out where the insects are invading and outsmarting them by clever use of appropriate control measures. Larry A. Sagers Regional Horticulturist Utah State University Thanksgiving Point Office
