problem with ants

[stevenrafferty]

Has anyone had a similar problem with ants? We have found a few ants in one of the kitchen cupboards - no open food, its all in sealed jars.

not sure where they are coming from but any ideas on how to get rid of them?

obviously, don't want to spray an insecticide in the kitchen!

 

[PowerTool]

Ex-wife has had lots this year - she has been using powder and gel ant-killers.
I had some a couple of years ago - were coming through a crack in the wall from the garden,and setting up base camp underneath the kitchen units.I used a spray ant killer,that you spray anywhere they travel (e.g. - bottom of kitchen units) which sticks to the ants as they walk through it,they then carry it back to the nest/rest of the colony,and kill all them as well

 

[felix]

If you don't like the idea of spraying anything you can get ant traps; little plastic containers with a poison pellet inside. The idea is that you put these down somewhere along the ants' trail. For those who don't know, ants start by scavenging at random but if one of them finds a good food source it lays a scent trail back to the nest. Other ants follow this and if they also find food they add extra scent. This means that if one of those ants in your kitchen ever finds something edible, like a sticky ring under a jam jar, it will soon have all its friends round too.

We had so many ants one year that you had to pour water from kettle to cup through a strainer to get the boiled ants out. I came into the kitchen one morning and found a river of ants two feet wide flowing smoothly in and out of the bin! That was when I got a couple of these traps.

In theory the ants go through the traps and pick up some of the slow acting poison each time. They carry it back to the nest and it kills the queen. Our ants just walked round the things but then I put a little dab of jam at each hole and they started taking short cuts through the middle. The ants kept coming for the rest of the year, just as they had the previous two years, but next year there were none. In fact there have been none coming in by that route for several years now.