Are you wondering how to get rid of carpenter ants? Carpenter ants in a house are slightly terrifying.
Will they destroy the foundation?
Are the floors going to cave in?
How badly can they damage the roof?
The answers to all of these questions aren’t good if you let those little critters hang around too long. But getting rid of them is definitely do-able for any do-it-yourselfer.
Carpenter ants are huge. But even though they seem scary, don’t be intimidated. They can bite but they don’t have any poison in their big bodies. If you see a carpenter ant in the house, don’t be afraid to snatch it up and flush it down the toilet.
If you have carpenter ants in your home, you don’t have to call pest control. You can get rid of them without the use of pesticides and other deadly chemicals. The first step is figuring out how they’re getting inside. This could be a crack in the doorway, a rarely used drain, or even your dishwasher! This task will take some investigating on your part.
You’ll know you’ve found the carpenter ants’ entrance to your home when you’ve located a small hole with ants coming through every few minutes. Don’t kill these ants yet. You need them to stay alive and take your homemade poison back to their nest. To make the poison, you’ll need the following:
A spoon
1 tbsp of jam
A small container like an empty yogurt cup
2 tsp Boric Acid from the pharmacy (not Borax)– do not use borax from the laundry aisle.
2 tbsp Corn flour
First, mix ½ teaspoon of boric acid with enough jam to make a thick paste. Put it in one of your small containers and put near the entrance to the colony. Leave it overnight. The ants will try the boric acid/jam paste and take it back to their nest, to feed to the queen.
Next, make the paste again but this time add your corn flour to make a very thick putty. Knead it with your fingers until you can mold it like play dough. After you’ve left your paste over night for the ants to taste, you’ll plug the hole the next morning with your putty. Push the putty as far into the hole as you are able. Smooth the surface of the hole. It will harden and stay put.
Leave the remainder of your two mixtures near the hole in case more ants come through. Remove once you’ve noticed the ants have stopped coming inside. Leave the mixture there for a week. If the ants make new holes to get inside, they will again find your boric acid mixture and continue to bring it back to their colony.
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