The best I've found for all creepie crawlies is instant quick grits. Dried grains are brought to the queen, her secretions cause her to blow up and the ants move on in seach of new Q and digs. The crawlies have to be able to get the grains so make sure you put them where they will march over the pile/line of grits.

I've had this same problem, and the ants always come back. We've finally found a product that seems to be making a BIG difference.

Prescription Treatment brand: ADVANCE 375A Select Granular Ant Bait

I found out about it from www.ourwaterourworld.org.

It's less harmful than the toxic pesticides that are sprayed, and it really does the trick!

When I lived in Central California, we had a BIG problem with red ants. They were everywhere...

What I finally learned to do, was to stop killing them. If you kill them, they keep coming back.

I had to be a meticulous housekeeper. With three small children, my kitchen floor had to be carefully swept and mopped, after each meal. My counters had to be wiped immediately and no food could be left out.

In a few weeks, the ants learned that there was no food to be had and they left. :)

powdered acid for got what kind. they get it on them antake it home an kill the rest

BLACK PEPPER!
It sounds crazy but it works. It is a little messy but you sprinkle pepper around the area where you see most of them-like around the kitchen cabinets. Leave it for a few days and the ants will be gone. Pepper is really strong especially to something as small as an ant, everyone has it and it is completly safe.

This is an old hillbilly remedy.

Two days later, this seems to be working:

www.terro.com/index.php

Not sold at grocery stores, but I found it at the local hardware store.

It's a borax/sugar liquid. There's some interesting info on the Argentine ant in particular on the site. Apparently Argentine ant colonies can have many queens, and the colonies can divide, recombine, etc., which is why they're so hard to get rid of.

one word...anteater!

Check put this thread written in March. ....

March 29, 2005 - 02:34 AM
Getting rid of bugs...

A friend of mine moved into a new apartment about 6 months ago.

When he moved in there were no bugs. Then after about a week he started getting ants and other bugs coming out of the baseboards and walls. So here is what he did.
He got some habanero powder and mixed it into a gallon of paint. Then he painted all of the baseboards and molding. Then in the corners, behind the stove and refer he sprinkled some of the powder.
Not a bug one since he did that. Cool huh?

Its all about the DE... Thats diatomaceous earth... I have used here at the BM ranch to remove massive amounts of ants from areas I have camped. Basically you spready it around the mound, and that works fast. In the case of a house, its handy to spready it around the permiter of your house. Or spread it near the places that they get into the house, inside cabinets, etc. How it works is ants have an exoskeleton in which when they walk across the DE the skeleton gets sliced up, making them dry out or bleed to death. It doest take long for them to figure it out, and leave the area. DE is also used in pool filters, however that type does not work the same. DE is natural, its crushed fossils basically, Pool filter DE is more of a rolled DE, not crushed, so it doesnt have the same abrasion factor. Check it out..
www.greenharvest.com.au/pestco...fo.html
www.biconet.com/crawlers/DE.html

C.

Give coffee grounds a try. New or used doesn't matter, just sprinkle them where the ants are and see if it helps. It's supposed to keep ants and other small chewing type bugs at bay. I've tried it in my veggie garden and have had great results protecting my seedlings from attack. Good luck

I'm breathing life into this old thread simply because my newish apartment has become a winter mecca to hungry ants. I'm going to try a sweet bait of boric acid, jelly and peanut butter stuffed in straws per the BugMan's suggestion [ www.fagerlund.addr.com/ants.htm ] and leave the straw bait outside my apt. and under it. If the tactic works, I'm going to suggest this to my building neighbors. Our landlord suggested I bomb the crawl space under my apt. but I'm not into poisoning me and my cats right now.

Have ya tried Boric Acid solutions? There are a variety, I prefer the ones sold at Agway.
You can make 'em yourself too.

Also the potential for a trip to canada may be in order. I believe they still sell Chloradane there.

Get some Cobalt 60.
Grind it to a fine powder.
Sprinkle that powder all around the house outside and inside.
Wait a few days.
Insect and rodent problem solved.

My old boss used to make these poison traps that she swore by.

Get a PVC drain cover (or vent, maybe? looks like a cap with slits on the end), about 4 inch diameter, and a PVC cap to either fit around it or inside it. Mix a solution of dextrose water (or other sugar water) and boric acid powder, pour some in the cap and cover with the drain cover. The ants that drink from it will take the poison back to the nest. The drain cover was basically so she could put them where necessary without risking harm to her dogs and cats.

I found these sites on a brief google search. Only skimmed them, but they seemed to have a variety of ideas, and info on ants in general...

www.thefrugallife.com/ants.html

lancaster.unl.edu/enviro/pe...267-95.htm

As a repellant, I use mint oil spray. It is sold as a pesticide, or at least a repellent, in a yellow spray can. It is supposedly nontoxic to people and pets, which makes sense because it is mint out. But I guess ants don't dig it. Yes, it doesn't kill the colony. But strategic spraying can keep them out of your house.

also find out where they are coming from and seal the opening.

So I tried the BugMan's sweet bait of 3 parts peanut butter, 2 parts jelly, and 1 tbs boric acid. Mixed the goo in an unwashed empty can of cat food. Then cut up straws. Since the straws were skinny (whatever hapened to big straws? anyway got 'em free at Wendy's), just stabbed them into the bait and placed the baited straws outside and through the crawl space wire meshes. Then I left the can on top of the kitchen cabinet, as I thought the ants were coming up from some hole behind the kitchen cabinet.

And then thousands upon thousands of ants marched single file into my apartment. But not from the supposed hole behind the kitchen cabinet. They were coming from the crevice between the new oak flooring and the wall baseboard in my bedroom. This same wall on the other side has the kitchen cabinets affixed to it. Since I wanted the bait to work, I squelched the urge to wipe the little buggers out with a hot soapy wash cloth. Since they were coming in so strong and seemingly unaffected by the bait, I decided to make up a smaller batch, adding just a little more boric acid, and placing it along the trail in my bedroom. At one point, hundreds of foraging ants left the trail to explore my kitchen floor twice. Which in the early a.m. and with the kitchen light on, turned out to be a real drag. So after cleaning up the floor the second time, I sprinkled some old Johnson's Baby Powder around the perimeter of the kitchen floor. That seemed to keep the ants from the floor.

Now, a week after I started the experiment, the ants have all but disappeared from my apt. Nice to wake up and find that the steady stream has stopped. Still get a few scouts (like two at a time) checking out the kitchen countertops. Would like to sweep up the baby powder. But will leave it on the floor for at least a few more weeks. The floor crevice I'll caulk soon.