Get Rid of Little Black Ants (Argentine Ants) - These Ant Baits Work
3 Eco-Friendly Ant Killers (Plus Home Remedies!)
As an eco-friendly homeowner, I won't spray poison! But most ant baits don't work. Finally, I've found some that do.
Ant baits are a kind of poison that ants take back to the hive. This method isn't 100% environmentally friendly, but at least it keeps the poison where it belongs: inside the bait, and inside the ant.
Put the baits where pets and kids won't find them: behind the washer and dryer, for example. Ants go where kids and pets can't.
Since different ant species prefer different baits, I'll also share five easy steps to test what kind of ants you have. And I've got some home remedy ant bait recipes you can try, if you would prefer that to commercial ant bait. Finally, I'll recommend a few non-toxic, organic pest control methods I use which aren't 100% effective, but which are 100% kid-safe, pet-safe and environmentally friendly.
Above: Photo I snapped of ants going into a bait. I wrote this review a year ago, just added this photo. This time they found the bait so fast that the swarm was gone within about 8 hours. That's a little fast; it usually takes a few days.
Ant Bait Home Remedy
The key is to mix sugar and boric acid. Finding Borax is hard these days. Here's several Home Remedy Ant Poison recipes using sugar water or jelly. I haven't tried them, but our grandparents did.
Note: if you have grease/protein ants, see this grease ant bait recipe!
Pet-Friendly But Strong-Smelling Ant Poison
3 More Tips to Fight Ants
Keep your kitchen SPOTLESS. No more leaving dirty dishes for tomorrow. Put food (including pet food, I discovered the hard way) in sealed containers.
If they're going after the cat's or dog's dish, put it in a shallow saucer of water so it's got a moat. (Or spray the bottom of the dish with that Eco-smart stuff.)
Caulk every window, toilet, bathtub, and crack around the house. Ants can get through TINY holes.
Little Black Ants are UNIQUE Pests
Note to California homeowners: our little black ants are mostly Argentine Ants, an invasive species that has no natural predators and is starving horned lizards to extinction! So if you're a green homeowner, don't feel guilty about killing ants -- you're saving an endangered species!
How to Tell Which Kind of Ants Your Have
Test Your Ants Before You Choose Your Poison
I found the Terro baits work great on the little black ants of California, but there are many types of ants.
Some ants like sugar, some like grease and oil, and some like protein. Most ant baits in grocery stores are protein and grease, so they don't work well on sugar ants.
Here's how to check which kind of ants you have, adapted from this helpful post by Benjamin Shelton.
- Label 3 pieces of paper with "grease", "protein", and "sugar."
- Cover the paper with clear plastic tape so the test bait won't soak through.
- Put a dot of cooking oil (or peanut butter?) on the "grease" test, a bit of meat juices and meat (something ground-up like deli spreads; Benjamin recommended ham) on the "protein" bait, and fruit jelly or sugar water on the "sugar" bait.
- Place the test bait where the ants are coming in.
- Watch to see which bait they like most.
- Find an ant bait appropriate to your ants. See the bottom of this non-toxic ant poisons guide for which kinds of ants different commercial baits target. plus a recipe for grease ant poison using peanut butter, boric acid and honey.
