Ants in the Plants

A few weeks ago, I brought some of the plants in my office home.  I soon  noticed a few very small ants walking around on top of the tool box where one umbrella plant was sitting.  I don't know what kind they are.  As I have noted previously, I have had the most success with ants when I've used bait.  I still have some Advion packed away in a box somewhere, but I had a tube of Optigard readily available.

I've had mixed results with Optigard.  Sometimes ants just walk by it; othertimes they go after it immediately, like the picture in the previous post showed.  This time they were initially pretty indifferent. 

They walked right by and around the spots of bait.  After a few minutes, an ant tried it, and was soon joined by some others.  They didn't take much, but I don't know how many were in the plant.  I didn't get a large number coming out of the soil when I watered it, like I have seen before with other colonized pots.

However, the baiting was at least partly successful: about three days later, the top of the filing cabinet had a number of dead ants on it.

The Optigard worked, although I had the same issue mentioned previously: it seems to be prone to separation, with the first thing coming out of the tube being close to syrup in consistency.  That's okay for a flat surface like the filing cabinet, but not so good for a vertical one like a wall.