BS: Ants

Subject: BS: Ants
From: Rt Revd Sir jOhn from Hull
Date: 17 Jun 03 - 03:41 PM

Heloo,haws,anybody,else,got,ants,in,there,house?
if,so,how,did,you,get,rid,of,them?
i,bouhjt,some,ant,poder,from,wilkinsons,but,it,doesnt,work.
so,what,you,think,works?
they,starting,to,really,piss,me,off,now,
i,think,they,came,here,becauseof,thehot,weater,and,i,think,the,getting,in,,from,the,fireplace,area.

Subject: RE: BS: Ants
From: Clinton Hammond
Date: 17 Jun 03 - 04:03 PM

I think you should get a new keyboard or something... you appear to have bigger problems than ants....

For ants... "Crawling Insect Raid"... Kills bugs dead... and well, I even kinda like the new smell it's got...

:-)

Subject: RE: BS: Ants
From: Gareth
Date: 17 Jun 03 - 04:11 PM

Swop the 'Amster for an Anteater ?????

Gareth

Subject: RE: BS: Ants
From: kendall
Date: 17 Jun 03 - 05:07 PM

If you are into natural stuff, try mixing boric acid and mollasses (tracle) or anything sweet.

Subject: RE: BS: Ants
From: Homeless
Date: 17 Jun 03 - 05:20 PM

There are a few different kinds of ants. Usually they break down into those who like sweet, and those who like fats. Sweet ants are more common, and oil ants won't go for those baits and poisons. So you may need to look for remedies tailored to the oil prefering ants.

Also, some ants don't like mint - tho this won't destroy them - just get them to move.

Subject: RE: BS: Ants
From: Grab
Date: 17 Jun 03 - 06:07 PM

Nippon is good.

The quick fix is the powder. Put a *continuous* wide line of powder all round where the ants are getting in. Preferably do this around where the ants are getting in outside, rather than inside, otherwise the ants will just move elsewhere inside. Nuking all round the nest area with powder will slow them down quite a lot too. And of course there's the tried-and-tested old method of pouring boiling water down the nest.

The slow fix is the bait. Eventually that allegedly kills off the ants. Our local ants don't seem to be taking it though - maybe Homeless's idea of sweet/oil ants is the problem. I think Nippon is sugary.

Graham.

Subject: RE: BS: Ants
From: Emma B
Date: 17 Jun 03 - 07:27 PM

Mint really does work - at least they will only annoy your neighbours - and hey, it's much more friendly! I saw the film and I thought they were really cute - especially the Woody Allen one

Subject: RE: BS: Ants
From: Gareth
Date: 17 Jun 03 - 07:32 PM

Ahhhh ! Weapons of Mass Ant Destruction.

In East Africa, many years ago I've used a crude form of Napalm ( Petrol and Soap) against termite mounds, pumped in, then a flare lobbed from a distance. Did the job, unfortunatley one we did contained a Cobra - It came out, burning, in an somewhat aggresive mood, thank the Lord for father and his 12 gauge.

But in the UK, boiling water, followed by old engine oil, will do the business.

Gareth - Who suspects that his hearing difficulties might stem from having a 12 gauge fired with the muzzel about 12 inches from his left ear.

Subject: RE: BS: Ants
From: kendall
Date: 17 Jun 03 - 07:48 PM

Talk about burning the barn to kill the rats!

I've had great success with a product called TERRO. They like the sticky liquid, so they take it back to the queen, and... did anyone see that movie titled THEM?

Subject: RE: BS: Ants
From: LadyJean
Date: 18 Jun 03 - 12:12 AM

If you can get them, try Raid ant traps. Use the black extra strength ones. They do the job, and you don't have to spray all kinds of nasty stuff around the house.
It occurs to me, a friend of mine has a small notice in her bathroom, "PLEASE DON'T KILL THE SPIDERS THEY EAT THE ANTS". If you don't mind spiders, that would also solve your problem

Subject: RE: BS: Ants
From: Phot
Date: 18 Jun 03 - 01:30 AM

Listen to Sahra Kennedy on BBC Radio 2, shes having quite a thing on ants at the moment!

Subject: RE: BS: Ants
From: alison
Date: 18 Jun 03 - 02:00 AM

we have a thing over here called "ant-rid" sticky oliy thing they carry it back to the nest...... works a treat

if you want to go herbal they don't like pennyroyal

and apparently they don't like to cross sand.......


slainte

alison

Subject: RE: BS: Ants
From: Jeanie
Date: 18 Jun 03 - 02:52 AM

The most effective way I've found of getting rid of ants is plain old talcum powder (of whatever perfume) sprinkled liberally where they are getting in and all around the edges/corners of the room. The ants hate it ! When my kitchen was invaded, and I didn't want ant-powder anywhere near food, talcum powder worked a treat.

- jeanie

Subject: RE: BS: Ants
From: Little Hawk
Date: 18 Jun 03 - 03:07 AM

Don't listen to these sods with their wimpy half-baked solutions, John. Get a gun. A big one. It is a scientifically proven fact that no ant can stand up to a direct hit by a 30 cal. bullet fired at short range, either hollow point or full metal jacket will do.

I prefer to stalk the little rascals one by one, and take 'em out with a single round to the head. It's challenging, and demands stealth and accuracy.

If you are really in a hurry, however, you may want to acquire a 30 cal machine gun on a tripod and lay down a heavier volume of fire. You will find that this makes convenient openings in the walls and other places in your house where the ants hide, and then you can blast them out of your life in jig time.

50 cal machine guns are too big. Don't bother with them unless you also have a major problem with stoats or musk oxen.

Here's a quieter way to kill ants, if they're sugar ants. Supply them with all the sugar they can haul away...a 10 pound bag should do it. Just spread it around here and there, or put it in a shallow dish. The ants will find it quickly, and start eagerly taking it back to their hive. What happens then is quite similar to what happens to people who regularly consume sugar, cigarettes and alcohol, but it works a lot quicker on ants. The little rascals get hopelessly addicted to the sugar, stop eating all the various healthful and natural food that they really need, and ruin their health utterly eathing nothing but sugar...and soon the whole colony degenerates, gets sick, and dies off!

I'm not kidding. A diet of refined sugar will kill ants dead.

But I still prefer using a rifle. I hate to see the ants suffer.

- LH

Subject: RE: BS: Ants
From: GUEST,ozmacca
Date: 18 Jun 03 - 03:19 AM

Hey Little Hawk. That's getting a bit drastic isn't it? Blasting away with a 0.303. Even the LMG needs you to be there and active. Why not just lay a few Claymore mines around the kitchen before you go to bed. Set up the trip wires at the entrances to the nest. That way you can take out the ants, and still get a full night's sleep.

Subject: RE: BS: Ants
From: Sorcha
Date: 18 Jun 03 - 10:06 AM

Clean up the house. Don't leave food crumbs, beer cans, etc. laying around. Force them to find another food source.

Subject: RE: BS: Ants
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 18 Jun 03 - 10:20 AM

Garden centre visit called for, ask for a product called Nippon, that will do it.....Giok

Subject: RE: BS: Ants
From: Metchosin
Date: 18 Jun 03 - 10:43 AM

If you have enough patience you could use my young nephew's solution. My daughter visited him and noticed pieces of scotch tape stuck to the floor of his room. He had taped a lot of carpenter ants to the floor. When queried he explained that, he didn't want to hurt them, but he didn't like them moving around.

Subject: RE: BS: Ants
From: Little Hawk
Date: 18 Jun 03 - 11:12 AM

Right... So he tortures them instead? Nice guy.

Look, Sorcha, it is almost sacreligious to ask John from Hull to "clean up the house"! I mean, really... Would you ask Woody Allen to stop complaining? Would you ask George Bush to disarm the USA and take up needlepoint?

- LH

Subject: RE: BS: Ants
From: GUEST,Stilly River Sage (away from my desk. . .)
Date: 18 Jun 03 - 11:35 AM

That sugar for the sugar ants sounds interesting. It would at least give them one place to focus on. They invaded my kitchen sink area about 10 days ago, after a lot of heavy rain, but they haven't gone away now that the rain hazard has passed. And they choose different targets each time I find them. A moist sponge one time, the underside of a bowl on the drain board the next, under the drainboard, etc. Sugar might concentrate their numbers for ant traps or borax.

One of the local organic gardening gurus swears by dried molasses for a lot of things, including fertilization. And to kill off stuff like nut grass (a sedge, I think, not a true grass) he says "kill it with kindness." Use the molasses along with whatever soil ammendments for the general area, but by upping the sugar content, the nutgrass grows so fast it will end up rotting off the top. Or something like that. And I think molasses and borax has been recommended by this guy for ants and roaches, etc.

SRS

Subject: RE: BS: Ants
From: Metchosin
Date: 18 Jun 03 - 11:38 AM

So you think ingesting poison or drowning or being seered by flames isn't torturous? By comparison, to a very young mind, incarceration by scotch tape could seem innocuous. If I was in a Turkish prison, I'd rather be taped to the floor than any of the above.*BG*

Subject: RE: BS: Ants
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 18 Jun 03 - 11:48 AM

Try Bisodol or Rennies. I belive thay are very good ant acids...

Shall I go now?

Cheers

DtG

Subject: RE: BS: Ants
From: Raggytash
Date: 18 Jun 03 - 11:53 AM

John Put down Brandy and Grit Sand, the little buggers drink the Brandy get aggressive and violent and stone each other to death
..............easy peasy

Subject: RE: BS: Ants
From: kendall
Date: 18 Jun 03 - 11:54 AM

I've tried everything except the machine gun, and nothing works better than TERRO. (Ace Hardware)

Subject: RE: BS: Ants
From: Mantid
Date: 18 Jun 03 - 02:11 PM

Make sure you have no standing water in the kitchen or bathroom. This time of year they are looking more for water than sugar or bread crumbs.

Subject: RE: BS: Ants
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 18 Jun 03 - 04:31 PM

How does the mint work? Do you leave leaves lying around, or make mint tea and squirt themn with it, or what?

Subject: RE: BS: Ants
From: Penny S.
Date: 18 Jun 03 - 05:49 PM

There's an essay by Richard Feynman about this problem, which I can't find at the moment. He established a source of sweet stuff - may have been honey, outside the place where the ants were entering his room. Then he used paper strips to ferry the ants inside the room to near the honeypot. Wandering around laden with goodies, they eventually found the trail home, and helped to establish a new trail which diverted others away from indoors. I'm not sure of the details, though.

Penny

Subject: RE: BS: Ants
From: Sorcha
Date: 18 Jun 03 - 05:57 PM

Tansy is also an organic ant repellant, but it is an abortifacant in mammals if that is a concern (I very much doubt that at 9's house......)

Subject: RE: BS: Ants
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 18 Jun 03 - 05:59 PM

That sounds like an entertaining and humane way of solving the problem, Penny.

Here's a page about Richard Feynman, who sounds like an interesting man. Even apart from the ant study.

Subject: RE: BS: Ants
From: Gareth
Date: 18 Jun 03 - 07:34 PM

Me, "I just love the smell of Napalm in the Morning"

Gareth *BG*

Subject: RE: BS: Ants
From: CamiSu
Date: 18 Jun 03 - 08:11 PM

They don't like to cross cinnamon. However I have been invaded... After the fire we found a LARGE nest in the foam insulation we pulled out. We disposed of it, but I fear did not get the queen. my exchange student says she has ants in her room and I fear they are carpenter ants. We also found a pile of chewed foam in hte bathroom. The Terro is out! (I know it works on sweet ants. I only hope it works on wood ants as well....)

CamiSu

Subject: RE: BS: Ants
From: Little Hawk
Date: 18 Jun 03 - 11:22 PM

It's true that ants are sometimes looking for water. The remedy is the same as with the sugar...give 'em so much of what they want that it kills 'em. This can easily be done by 9flooding your house to a depth of about 3 feet of water on the main floor, but it's difficult with houses that have basements. For a small fee (well, okay, a not-so-small fee) the 9local firefighting detachment can waterbomb your house with one of those big airplanes, and do the whole shot in a minute or less. Be sure to stand well back away from the house or you may get drowned in your own living room, which would render the ant solution a bit 9redundant.

Subject: RE: BS: Ants
From: Sorcha
Date: 18 Jun 03 - 11:41 PM

Puir jOhn9 From Planet Hull. Why do we all pick on him so much?
(Cuz it's soooo much fun)

Subject: RE: BS: Ants
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 19 Jun 03 - 12:55 AM

If they are "sweet" ants, I vote for Terro. Our latest invading "sweet" ants were going after the cat food, so I wonder how valid the sweet vs greasy distinction is.

One day we did have an upset when a visiting dog lapped up the Terro, but she was a big dog and apparently there were no ill effects. So put the Terro where nothing but ants can get at it.

As for the mint suggestion, the flowerbeds outside my kitchen are solidly cloaked in mint, and the ants come merrily through anyhow.

Subject: RE: BS: Ants
From: rangeroger
Date: 19 Jun 03 - 01:25 AM

Do you think it's the ants or residual hamster shit stuck behind the space bar on John9s keyboard that is causing him to space all his posts with commas?

Or maybe too many bears?

rr

Subject: RE: BS: Ants
From: Mudlark
Date: 19 Jun 03 - 02:54 AM

Ants invade my kitchen (and my cupboards) regularly. I'm reluctant to use poison in the kitchen (or anyhwere for that matter). I kill the main infestation with hot soapy water, then wipe down their trail lines with wood alchohol, if necessary leaving little soaked cotton wads about, which discourages further scouts. A line of scouring powder also works well (Borax should work really well, since if you can get them to take boric acid back to nest it will kill the lot) but Ive never gotten around to trying it).

Subject: RE: BS: Ants
From: GUEST,noddy
Date: 19 Jun 03 - 12:08 PM

KILL THEM ALL.
KILL THEM ALL.

hope that was not to upsetting for you but the changing room in my gym was infested with them last night. I had them all over my clothes when I came out the shower.

KILL THEM ALL.

Subject: RE: BS: Ants
From: GUEST,Penny S. (elsewhere)
Date: 19 Jun 03 - 01:04 PM

My mother used to swear by Nippon, but then they took the borax or boracic acid out, and it wasn't so good, she said.

Penny

Subject: RE: BS: Ants
From: Little Hawk
Date: 19 Jun 03 - 01:30 PM

I actually set out at the age of 7 to kill ALL the ants. As you can see, I failed miserably. I gave it up at age 9 and a half, and settled for just killing some of them. Lately I have killed very few. None in fact. This is because I am developing compassion as my own mortality becomes clearer to me. I actually rescue ants now.

This may seem odd in the light of my other postings above, but I am an odd fellow, so take no notice.

- LH

Subject: RE: BS: Ants
From: katlaughing
Date: 19 Jun 03 - 05:47 PM

At age 3 or so, I fell into a pile of red ants which made them very angry. They were all over me, biting me and making me scream. remember mom rushing me into the bathroom and filling the bathtub full of water, then immersing me in order to drown them off of me. That Christmas I received not one, but two packages of panties which were printed with red ants and for years after was teased about having ants in my pants!

These days our ants are all outside, thankfully. One thing I've learned, from Aine, is that Orange cleaner, that stuff that is advertised on tv and can be bought almost anywhere, has orange oil in it, will work on bugs. She uses it in her garden, etc. I've used it around here. She puts it right on her garden hose with one of those receptacle attachments and sprays it all over. And, it is safe around pets, as far as I know.

Subject: RE: BS: Ants
From: Sorcha
Date: 19 Jun 03 - 05:53 PM

Now that is a great thing to know! Thanks!

Subject: RE: BS: Ants
From: Metchosin
Date: 20 Jun 03 - 01:56 AM

having ants in ones pants was considered a good thing at one time. Loggers, apparently, used to put their pants (crummy clothes) on anthills so that the ants would eat the lice. An early form of drycleaning.

Subject: RE: BS: Ants
From: katlaughing
Date: 20 Jun 03 - 10:17 AM

Oh, great, Mets, thanks a lot!**bg**

Subject: RE: BS: Ants
From: JennyO
Date: 20 Jun 03 - 10:34 AM

In Oz we have a brand of womens underwear called "Antz Pantz".

An advertisement for them, which I think won an award, has this young lady reclining on a bed in what is supposed to be a tropical setting, while an army of ants creep up towards her "Antz Pants".

At this stage, the camera switches to her face. At the exact right moment she calls her pet anteater and murmurs "Sic 'em Rex!" The sound of Rex the anteater polishing off the ants and the expression on her face tells the rest of the story.

Jenny

Subject: RE: BS: Ants
From: katlaughing
Date: 20 Jun 03 - 05:31 PM

I'd love to see that ad, Jenny! What an image it conjures!

Subject: RE: BS: Ants
From: Bill D
Date: 20 Jun 03 - 06:11 PM

we don't GET commercials like that in the USA...mores the pity!

so....what you need for ants is simple...you need one pair of tweezers, and two small boards....carefully label the boards "A" and "B"...when you encounter an ant, pick it up with the tweezers and place it on board "A", then strike it with board "B"....

this also works for various other bugs....and...this system was once sold nationally in magazine ads, as a "guaranteed insect killer" for $9.95...

Subject: RE: BS: Ants
From: Little Hawk
Date: 20 Jun 03 - 06:42 PM

A board and a mallet works great too. Same general idea.

- LH

Subject: RE: BS: Ants
From: GUEST,VOXFOX
Date: 20 Jun 03 - 08:50 PM

Ants have invaded my home too. They started out in the bathroom around the flush and the tub, must have been the water attraction there. Then they proceeded to invade the laundry basket, the walls, and on into the kitchen before I finally found what works for me... Raid ant killer in the liquid form.   Just a few drops left in strategic places had them gone in less than a week. It acts like a food attraction and they eat it up and take it back to the colony where they feed it to the others . Haven't seen any in a while although I am paranoid now when I sit on the flush, I have to check it for critters. LOL Any way , This stuff comes in a 100 ml red plastic bottle. I got mine at the grocery store but I imagine it is everywhere. Contains 7.7% Borax.   Now if you have any cures for Mozzies and blackflies......:o)   VF

Subject: RE: BS: Ants
From: VoxFox
Date: 20 Jun 03 - 08:57 PM

AAAARRRRGGGGGHHHHHHHHH, They stole my cookie...must be sweet ants, LOL