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.

Another Ant-Baiting Episode

It looks like ants have taken up residency in one of my Jerusalem artichoke pots.  I noticed the ant trail, and also saw that when I watered the pot they'd come surging out of the soil.  I tried placing bait along their trail into the pot, but it was an old tube of Optigard and it had a fair amount of leakiness to it--there was some gel but also some liquid.  The ants didn't mind and rapidly formed up to get whatever they could.

There's still some activity in the pot, so whatever I did didn't take them all out.  I may try again later.

Ants

There are all kinds of ants in north Georgia.  The most notorious are fire ants, but Argentine, pavement, odorous house, carpenter, and other types are also here.  We don't have ghost ants, thankfully.  We also do not have crazy ants.

I've long had issues with both fire and non-fire ants.  Fire ants first.

Fire ants are constantly an issue, because even if a colony is eradicated, new colonies form all of the time.  I've had the best luck with bait treatments, but baiting is iffy.  The problem is that the bait usually has an oil base of some sort, and if it isn't fresh, the ants won't take it.  Amdro is readily available and works well--when it's fresh (there are several Amdro products, but I'm referring to just the baseline type that has hydramethylnon as the active ingredient).

Non-fire ants (everything else):  Most other ants seem to go for sweet foods, although some switch between sweet and protein.  For sweet-feeding ants, I've had the best luck baiting them.  A number of companies make gel baits with a variety of slow-acting pesticides.  My favorites are Optigard and Advion.  The picture shows ants eating Advion on the exterior brick wall of my house.   They readily take it--I have never seen them refuse it, even when the bait is a couple of years old--and haul it back to the nest.  Usually a treatment or two takes care of them, or at least knocks their numbers down a lot.  Optigard usually only seems to be appealing to them the day I put it down, while Advion still gets feeding activity the next day.  I put a series of small amounts like those shown above on a trail and let them go to it.  Ideally, I locate the bait near where they're entering a nest.  There are other sweet baits; Terro is one that uses boric acid as the active ingredient.  You can also make your own boric acid/sugar/water mixture; boric acid is often sold in powder form as roach killer.  Dusted along baseboards indoors it will work on both roaches and ants.  It can also be mixed with sugar water 1 tsp per cup--or with peanut butter for fat-seeking ants.  SFGate has recipes and recommendations.  Terro has little glossy-finished cards to put the bait on; you can make your own from a similarly-constructed retail packaging box or, for indoor or outdoor use, Do-It-Yourself Pest Control has inexpensive stations to hold liquid or granular bait.

Problem ants (rare):  I sometimes have ants that don't seem to be interested in either Amdro or sweet baits; for them the only obvious solution is a non-ingested pesticide.  Orthene powder works well but it's pretty toxic.  It will work on fire ants, too--dust around and over the top of the mound and ants will track it into the nest, killing it--but that leaves it laying in the yard.  A liquid solution, like Termidor or a generic equivalent, will also work and seems less hazardous to birds and other non-targeted animals.