OT Carpenter Ants

Borate solutions, termite shields, and most of all-replace the damp, rotting wood they are eating...

Hire an exterminator?!

I've tried various insecticides but the main problem is my house is next to a wooded area and I am unable to find the nests as these ants can live inside live trees as well as underground in buried logs. I have no damp, rotting wood except in the nearby treed areas - the ants don't seem to require such for nest building however as they prefer my open beam cedar roof with its rigid styrofoam insulation.

I'm not familiar with a "termite shield" - could you describe it please.

Laurie Forbes

We had the same problem when we lived in the Puget Sound area. The only solution we found was to move to the Central Oregon desert. No more carpenter ants!

Now, how can you stop the spiders from finding a way into my 80 year old house?

Paul, KD7HB

Laurie Forbes wrote: (...)

(...)

I don't have any pets or kids, so I mixed up a gallon of boric acid 'ant food' and left it in several glass jars (punched lids) around the property.

Worked a treat.

Boric acid is a poison. Don't use eating utensils to mix it.

Snap on your face mask. Funnel 10 teaspons of (99%) boric acid powder into a one gallon *plastic* jug. Add 2 cups of sugar and one drop of liquid hand soap. Add a quart of hot water. Cap and shake the jug. Add hot water to make one gallon of solution. Cap and shake to mix.

Empty and wash several glass jars with screw top lids. Punch or drill many holes in each lid.

Fill the jars about halfway with the ant poison and place them around the outside of your property. Also place jars where you see ants entering the house.

The ants that don't fall into the jars will return to the nest with a load of the solution, eventually killing the nest. The soap solution lowers the surface tension of the solution, causing some of the floating ants to sink.

As a result of this operation, you may see one or more winged female ants flying around your property in an effort to establish a new nest.

Punch them in the nose.

Hard.

Best of luck.

--Winston

Thanks much Winston - I'll try it this summer (I've tried about everything else and maybe this will do it).

Laurie Forbes

Use light or clear karo syrup instead of sugar, it will not ferment and it also wilol not attract bees etc......

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Carpenter ants mostly access your house by coming in on tree branches that are touching your roof or siding. Good prevention is to keep your trees trimmed well.

Greetings Laurie, I live in the northwest (USA). Of course, we have carpenter ants. Even though I had the things in my yard they never invaded the house. Because of what my yard used to be there was standing water in the crawl space for most of the year. My brother has had ants get into his house. The big difference is that his siding comes close to the ground and mine was always at least 6 inches above the dirt. The ant guy said that they need moisture so if the ground is wet or moist and is close to your house you will be invaded. My house sat on posts on piers so there was no moisture or moist dirt coming close to the house in the crawl space too. It was also well vented. Keep all vegetation at least

6 inches away from your house. Overhanging branches may also cause problems because if an ant falls onto your roof and finds something it likes on the way down to the ground it will leave a chemical pathway for subsequent ants to follow. And they will cross lots of dry area, like cement, or composition shingles, to get at what they want once there is a trail to follow. The trail lasts pretty long too. So it will be there the next day. And once traveled by many ants it gets even stronger. But take heart. In Australia live ants so voracious they will flatten tires of cars parked on the dirt for too long. ERS

Commercial products using boric acid are of a thick consistency, like honey. The idea is to let as many ants as possible eat the product and return to the nest with the poison, thus killing the queen.

The way I've prepared it is to make a saturated solution of boric acid in water, and then add sufficient syrup (corn starch helps too) to yield a nice thick goop.

They love it to death.

Jon

I found an ant spray that's supposed to be ultra bio friendly, uses wintergreen as one of the main active ingredients. It's quite deadly to ants, and when sprayed on a trail of ants, those ants not sprayed, really react when they get near it. Much more so that with regular ant sprays. If you can find their trail, might try spraying straight wintergreen oil on them and see if they refuse to cross it.

Jon

Geckos. The word for spider in gecko is 'lunch'.

--RC (who encourages anything that eats black widows.)

Isn't that an oxymoron?

Tim

-- "I've got more trophies than Wayne Gretsky and the Pope combined!" - Homer Simpson Website @

I've used up the can and not gotten around to buying another, so I can't copy off the contents. But it doesn't contain any of the truely nasty chemicals most sprays use. I do recall wintergreen oil as one of the major ingredients, but most of the others were herbs. It's touted as being indoor friendly, and smells one hell of a lot better than the other stuff. It also displays persistence in that areas I've sprayed with it stay ant free for several weeks on average, where I've really hosed down areas with regular ant spray and seen ants walking right through the very next day.

I'll go buy another can and post the brand and active ingredients, been meaning to...

Jon

Good idea! What do you use to get rid of geckos?

Vaughn (WB4UHB)

Bio friendly is politica speach for Approbed by bio weenies, the composite term shouldn't be confused with meaning of the individual words or construed to have any scientific value. Bio weenies by the way are alot like carpenter ants.

Thanks for the suggestion Jon.

And, thanks to all who provided constructive suggestions for this problem. I'll try some or maybe all this summer - hopefully one at least will work.

Laurie Forbes

Cats. In feline the word for gecko is 'play toy'

--RC

just piss on em..... It will actually work.

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