Amdro's Ant Stakes Review: Are My Ants Smarter Than Average?

Uh oh, the temperature is warming up and the rain clouds are hanging out over my house. Guess what that means: Ants. I know, my heart should ache for their unceasing labors to aerate my lawn and serve as dinner for the monstrous spiders that roam around my foundation. But year after year of frustrating home invasions have forced me to introduce the little buggers to my friends Ortho and Raid.

Unfortunately, my wife no longer shares my enthusiasm for the insecticide apocalypse. Now that I have two very young children who are fascinated with eating anything that they can find off of the floor, I've been forcibly coerced to shelve the big guns. Not willing to give up the fight, however, I turned to the omniscient internet for advice. The answer: Amdro's Ant Stakes (also known as Grant's Ant Stakes).

Why stakes? How do they work?

The Amdro Ant Stakes are marketed as being usable both indoors and out. Thus, I deducted that if I were to plant them around the outside of the house, I'd both appease the wife and save the children from possible harm. Appropriately named, the plastic stakes can be inserted into the ground or laid flat with the bait hole facing upwards.

The entire purpose of the Ant Stakes, however, is to attract ants into the hole of death. When they were marketed as Grant's, the bait hole contained arsenic, a poison that causes all sorts of nasty symptoms if ingested. Now, the active ingredient is hydramethylnon, not nearly as toxic to humans but surely strong enough to KO a creature no larger than a grain of rice, right? According to Amdro, the bait is supposedly weak enough to allow the ant to bring it back to the colony and ultimately assassinate the queen.

Following the relatively simple directions of Amdro's Ant Stakes (remove from box and insert into ground), I eagerly awaited the army of darkness with open arms ... and waited ... and waited. In fact, after checking the stakes every few hours for signs of activity, I convinced myself that everything would be better in the morning -- I was wrong.

The stakes have been standing guard around my house for a week now. Like silent sentinels with frightening gargoyle faces, they have done a wonderful job at intimidating intruders. The problem, however, is that the ants are just running around the stakes and continuing on their merry way into my kitchen.

Surely you are doing something wrong

Perhaps I am an idiot. The instructions, which seemed so foolproof when I first popped open the box, must be hiding the crucial key to success from my eyes. The ants just don't care about the bait inside these stakes. Maybe it doesn't smell good. Possibly the stakes are too slippery. Whatever the reason, Amdro's Ant Stakes might as well have "WMDs inside. Stay out!" marked in whatever language ants read (pheromones?) all around them.

Thinking that the problem was dietary, I traced a path of honey and syrup up the stakes and into the bait hole. Within minutes, the stakes were overwhelmed with sugar-loving arthropods. Outsmarting them at last, I retired for another day only to find something very curious the next morning: The honey was entirely gone. The ants, on the other hand, were back to work on my linoleum.

So did you ever get rid of the ants?

In the end, I resorted to the insecticides that I had tried so vainly to avoid. Only on the outside of the house, mind you, in order to compromise. I know they won't be as effective thanks to rainfall, but at least the ants are gone for now.

As for Amdro's Ant Stakes: I've left them up around the perimeter of the house. Maybe a potential thief will see them and mistake them for a fancy infrared alarm system.