Small house ants: effective methods of extermination

The small ants that appeared in the house, at first glance, may seem very harmless. But in fact, these insects are able to multiply incredibly quickly and if you miss the time, they will fill all the rooms. Tiny pests will be found in the bathroom, in drawers, but the most unpleasant will be their presence in food. And if you notice that these insects catch your eye every day more and more often, this means only one thing - you must immediately take steps to eliminate them.

Description and features of existence

Small red ants, or as they are also called apartment ants or pharaohs, have a small body, the size of which does not exceed 2 mm. Their integument is painted in light brown or red color, sometimes the shade can be brought closer to red. They live in nests and always move in large groups.

Each nest may have several queens. They are distinguished by larger sizes of their body. The remaining individuals located in the anthill fulfill the role of workers. It is the latter that scurry around your kitchen and other rooms in search of food and are constantly caught my eye.

Colonies of small red ants are quite numerous and in one there may be about 300-400 thousand working individuals.

What attracts ants to apartments?

Red ants are not able to exist in street conditions and the only optimal place for them to live is the dwelling of a person. In houses and apartments it’s warm and comfortable, there is always a lot of food and the best conditions for reproduction.

On a note! Settlement is as follows: several "scouts" penetrate into the room to determine the conditions of existence. And if they find food and bring it to the nest, then this is a signal that this apartment will be an ideal place for arranging one or more nests!

But where do the little red ants come from? After all, somewhere they originally lived. There may be several options:

• if you live not in a private, but in an apartment building, then insects may well come from neighbors;
• if the house has a garbage chute, then it is also able to become a "hotbed" of red ants;
• small household pests often come to apartments from basements;
• often insects lay their paths into living quarters from catering establishments attached to the house.

On a note! Sometimes pharaoh ants can be brought to their apartment right on their clothes. However, if these are working individuals, then arranging a new nest in this case is impossible. After a few hours, they themselves will leave the room. Only the womb can create a new colony!

Fighting Red Ants

If you decided to find the answer to the question of how to get rid of small ants in the apartment yourself, then in this case remember that the struggle may require considerable effort. Ideally, steps to eliminate parasites should preferably be taken as early as possible:

• upon detection of one or two individuals;
• if you find out that insects have already settled in with neighbors;
• red ants were spotted on the outer wall of your house.

And if everything is done on time, then with a high degree of probability you will be able to prevent the creation of an anthill and further reproduction of parasites.

Recommendation! If we are talking about a multi-storey building, then in neglected cases it is advisable to destroy small red ants by joint efforts - together with the neighbors, since insects probably managed to infect more than one apartment!

In general, for the extermination of small ants, you can use funds from cockroaches, bugs and other crawling insects. However, it should be remembered that to fight only against workers is useless. It is necessary to destroy all the queen bees, since it is precisely they who will soon give life to new ants and you will fight with these small parasites endlessly.

So what can be applied?

Aerosols

If there are not many small ants found in the apartment, then in such situations good, and most importantly, quick results often show insecticidal aerosols. Similar drugs are sold in any department of household chemicals and at the same time their choice is quite large. Among the most popular:

• "Raid";
• "Raptor";
• "Combat";
• Super Cobra
• "Dr. Klaus" etc.

In use, these tools are very simple:

• First, you should free the room in which the treatment will be carried out from people and animals;
• if it’s a kitchen, then food and utensils are taken out of it, the rest of the rooms clean bedding and bedspreads;
• It is advisable for the processor himself to wear personal protective equipment: a mask and gloves;
• the drug must be sprayed on an outstretched arm, while it is important to treat not only established ant paths, but also various inaccessible places where the nest can be located. These include cracks in the floor and walls, corners, openings under the baseboards, wallpaper that has moved away from the wall.

In general, it is very simple to use aerosol sprays from ants, but when fighting with such means, you should work purposefully.

Important! Even the most effective aerosol will not bring the expected result, if you still can not find the ant nest. In addition, quite often it is outside the processed room and even the apartment!

Gels

Gels are usually used when aerosols have not helped in killing insects. In other words, the poisonous substance could not reach the "heart" of the colony. Insecticidal gels can help with this. Such drugs work on the principle of a chain reaction: working individuals, moving along the treated surface, catch particles of poison on their paws, they eat a certain amount of substance. But at the same time, death does not occur immediately - working individuals manage to carry the poison to the nest and feed the remaining inhabitants of the anthill.

On a note! With proper use of the gel, you can destroy the entire ant colony with the uterus in 3-4 weeks!

If small ants appeared in the apartment, then against them you can use gels such as:

• "Raptor";
• "Raid";
• Globol;
• Fas
• Clean House, etc.

Use the gel as follows;

• the drug is applied pointwise around the perimeter of the infected room, as well as near places where the anthill can be, and left for two weeks;
• if the product was accidentally wiped off at any site, the drug layer must be renewed;
• two weeks after the first treatment, a wet cleaning of the room is carried out and, if necessary, a gel layer is again applied.

On a note! Many insecticidal gels are toxic to humans and pets, but some contain bitterness. These substances do not prevent the ants from absorbing the poison, but at the same time protect your children and pets - they do not allow even a drop of the drug to be swallowed!

Dusty

Insecticidal dusts can be made in powder form or in solid form - the so-called chalk.Such funds are the cheapest and most affordable, but they work even longer than gels.

The dusts that can help fight small ants are as follows:

• "Masha";
• Globol;
• Fas-Double;
• "Clean House", etc.

The use of dusts is also quite simple:

• draw small lines along the perimeter of the room, along ant paths and near places where nests can be;
• if it is a powder, then it should be scattered around the perimeter of the room, in corners and near all inaccessible places;
• The edges of the kitchen furniture, window sill and ventilation grille also lend themselves to processing.

Aquafumigator

Another way to destroy the small ants in the apartment. The advantage of this device is that poisonous vapors are able to penetrate into the most inaccessible places, destroying absolutely all the insects that are in this house at that moment. He can clean the apartment from parasites in just a few hours.

It is used as follows:

• First of all, isolate the room from people and pets;
• if there is a fire alarm, then it must be turned off;
• tightly close windows and doors, drawer drawers, open cabinet doors and drawers;
• we take out the plastic container from the packaging and install it in the center of the room, pour water into it, put a metal container inside;
• we leave the room, close it and wash my hands thoroughly;
• after 3 hours the room is aired.

Advice! However, it should be remembered that re-processing is mandatory in order to destroy new individuals hatched from eggs! The second time an aquafumigator is recommended to be used after 3 weeks!

Folk remedies

Folk remedies can be safely used in absolutely any room in your apartment, including in situations where small ants have been seen in the kitchen. So, consider the most popular and effective ones.

• Boric acid - add a teaspoon of boron powder to a glass of water, mix. Pour a little liquid honey into the resulting solution or pour a spoonful of sugar. With a ready-made product, we lubricate ant paths, skirting boards and areas near the cracks.
• Yeast paste - add so much yeast to half a glass of water to get a viscous mass. We use the finished product similarly to the first preparation - we lubricate the places where the ants walked and can live.
• Borax powder - it should be combined with sugar in equal proportions and sprinkle the mixture around the perimeter of the room.
• Cornmeal - it is used in pure form. Flour must be scattered along the ant paths and near the cracks. Insects eat this product, but they cannot digest it - the flour swells in the stomach and soon the ant dies.

Folk remedies are good in that for their preparation you do not need to use any expensive products. All ingredients are readily available and in most cases are always in the kitchen. But at the same time, they often show good results only as auxiliary agents, especially with a large accumulation of ants.