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Tiny Game Hunting
Environmentally Healthy Ways to Trap and Kill the Pests in Your House and Garden
Hilary Dole Klein and Adrian M. Wenner
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Some
people believe that the cockroach will take over the world, but we bet
on the lowly ant.
Breeding colonies of ants, sometimes known as superorganisms, are resistant
to both radiation and industrial pollution. Colonies of some species can
even survive in flooded ground. In terms of sheer biomass, ants, along
with termites, are the dominant insect species on earth. They not only
outnumber us; they outweigh us. When it comes to social organization and
cooperation, they are in some ways more evolved than humans, acting for
the survival of the colony rather than the individual. Various ant species
plant crops, herd other insects for food, wage ferocious wars, take slaves,
and live with elaborate caste structures. Interestingly, ant colonies
are virtual female societies; males are bred only occasionally and only
for procreation. Besides being utterly impossible, it would be foolish
to attempt to eliminate all your ants, because in many ways ants are our
friends and allies, and we need them. In China, ants have been used for
thousands of years to help control pests in orchards, making them the
first insects known to be used for biological control. Ants actually help
control pests that we haven't always been very successful controlling
on our own. Both indoors and out, they eat the eggs and larvae of fleas,
flies, spiders, bed bugs, and probably silverfish and clothes moths. They
also go after cockroaches and conenose bugs. In addition, ants patrol
the perimeters of our houses and keep termites, their mortal enemies,
from establishing colonies in our homes. If we let them do their job,
that is.
Of the more than 8,800 known species of ants worldwide, only a small number will invade homes, some arriving in search of sweets, others drawn to meat and greasy stuff. The most common ants seen inside of houses are the Argentine ant (very small, brown, nests outdoors, prefers sweets, eliminates almost all other species of ant in the neighborhood); the pharaoh ant (small, light yellow or reddish, nests inside of buildings, attracted to all kinds of foods); the thief or grease ant (resembles the pharaoh ant, prefers meaty or greasy foods, sometimes lives in the nests of other ants); the pavement ant (brown or black, hairy, will eat just about anything, nests under stones, around pavement, or in foundations); and the odorous house ant (small, brown or black, gets its name from its unpleasant coconut odor when crushed). The worst ant to have in the house is the carpenter ant, which lives in wood and can be very destructive, chewing out burrows with its powerful jaws (see below).
Control
Indoors
Ants are one of the commonest pests in the kitchen and bathroom. Their
habit of showing up in outrageous numbers, their single-minded, almost
frantic scavenging, and the way they completely ignore us (at least cockroaches
have the grace to flee) provide a veritable gold mine for pest control
operators. Although we have no interest in encouraging ants in our homes,
we do feel that a great flood of insecticides has been unnecessarily directed
at these insects, for ants are fairly easy to discourage without using
highly toxic poisons.
Of course, it's always a shock when your home is invaded--especially by creatures helping themselves to your food. Ants are lickers, constantly licking something--including each other. Their active salivary glands help them predigest their food, so don't eat anything the ants have swarmed on; it may be contaminated. In hospitals, ants have even been blamed for transporting pathogens from soiled bandages and linens to clean ones.
On
the other hand, try not to overreact. Using organophosphates on ants is
like using nuclear weapons to stop a riot.
Ants often move after rain disturbs their nests. Conversely, during the dry season, they come into the house in search of water, so it seems that we are constantly threatened. In dry weather, put a few sources of water outside--shallow pans or bowls or a dripping hose--and they may leave you alone. Some people even provide a food source, like honey in a container with ant holes, in hopes of keeping them happily outdoors. With that added food, however, they can raise more ants.
It may be hard to second-guess ants, but your kitchen is definitely under consideration for attack when you see solitary ants wandering hither and thither. Do not ignore them. The good tidings they take back to the nest will be bad news for you. This is the time to make your kitchen less hospitable to them. Clean ferociously. Store food in sealed containers. Don't leave dirty dishes or garbage around. Rinse off sticky jars and bottles. Wipe counters down with a cloth soaked in vinegar to make the territory less appealing to the scouts.
If you do find a steady stream of them cruising determinedly inside your house, you can still take a number of simple measures without resorting to poisons that are needless overkill.
Soapy
Water--The Best Defense
Many household products such as Windex, furniture polish, and spray cleaners
will destroy ants. But the cheapest, easiest, and most effective method
is to put a teaspoon of liquid dish soap into a spray bottle of water
and zap the intruders with that. Besides killing them instantly, it destroys
the scent trails they lay down that lead other ants to food. A solution
of blended citrus peels and water (or citrus rind oil, which you can purchase)
will also kill ants (as well as fleas and garden pests) on contact.
Before you kill the invading ants, however, trace the columns back to their point of entry. This is where you really have to stop them. Powdered charcoal, turmeric, black or cayenne pepper (the hotter the better), cinnamon, citrus oil, and powdered cleanser all make good ant barriers. The barrier doesn't have to be any wider than a quarter of an inch, but it has to be a solid line, because ants are marvelously adept at finding the tiniest pathway. A silicone caulk will terminate the point of entry permanently, but in a pinch you can also squirt undiluted dish soap into their point of entry, dab it with petroleum jelly, or fill it with glue. Before sealing the cracks, use a bulb duster (and mask and goggles) to blow in desiccating dusts like diatomaceous earth or silica aerogel.
Sometimes it seems that nothing can keep those ants out of your kitchen. The battle goes on day after day. No sooner do you set up the barricades than these wily creatures find routes into your house you never knew existed. But since you are not using toxic poisons, the death count is entirely in your favor.
Place favorite ant targets--like the honey jar and the cat food dish--in bowls of water. Adding a little soap to the water will make such ant moats even more impenetrable. In Germany, forest ants are protected by law because of their vital role in the health of the forests. Germans keep the ants out of houses by placing lavender blossoms near the doors. Other ant repellents include cinnamon, crushed mint leaves, oil of clove, and camphor. People who go to the trouble of putting out repellents have probably removed all the attractive food sources as well. But then again, ants rely on their sense of smell in ways we can barely imagine.
Ant
Baits
Baits are the best way to do the most damage to any ant colony that has
selected your domain for relentless scavenging. Ants have two stomachs,
one of which is the crop, a kind of communal stomach, so any food taken
from your kitchen is shared with the ants back home. A good bait contains
a poison that the ants find attractive enough to take back to the nest
and pass along to others before it kills them. The aim is to kill the
queen back at the nest.
Many commercial baits contain highly toxic poisons. Don't buy them. If you don't buy them, manufacturers won't make them. Instead, look for baits that contain boric acid, such as Terro or Drax (see Tactics of Tiny Game Hunting in the Garden). We have found that the less boric acid, the more effective the bait in the long run. Remember this is a slow treatment, taking sometimes up to a week. Have patience; it works.
To make your own ant bait, dissolve a cup of sugar in two cups of boiling water. Cool. Add a tablespoon of 100 percent boric acid. Shake well. Punch holes in the tops (or sides) of small plastic containers or film cans. Place cotton balls or cut-up sponge pieces inside, then fill with bait and set the containers along problem ant trails, spilling a few drops on the trail. (Label the baits clearly as poison.) Keep in mind that you may be sacrificing ants that are benefiting your house by eliminating other pests for you.
Carpenter
Ants
Chewing out burrows with their powerful jaws, carpenter ants are easily
mistaken for termites. Like termites, some periodically develop wings
and leave in great numbers to form new colonies. Piles of broken-wings
may be a clue that you have either carpenter ants or termites. If you
see the insect itself, which is up to a half-inch longer than most other
ants, you can distinguish it from a termite because the ant has a pinched,
wasp waist and elbowed antennae, and its two pairs of wings are different
in size. The slits carpenter ants leave in wood are sometimes visible,
and their frass (fecal pellets) looks like sawdust. You can sometimes
hear rustling noises as they forage in the walls. Unlike termites, carpenter
ants leave their nests and scavenge for food within the house. They especially
like sugar, so they can be baited. Sometimes their nests can be vacuumed
out of walls. Or you can call in an exterminator to drill holes around
the infestation and blow in diatomaceous earth, silica aerogel, or boric
acid. Household nests tend to be satellite nests, so look for trails leading
to the parent nest outdoors and treat it with a pyrethrin spray or boric
acid bait.
Control
Outdoors
Millions of billions of ants go about their business in and out of nests
that range from a few inches under the soil to many feet underground,
covering practically the entire world. The earth may, in fact, be just
one giant anthill.
Nature truly benefits from the industry of ants, who recycle dead insects and animals to make way for the living and turn and aerate the soil, even more than earthworms. They also help spread vegetation and seeds and sometimes pollinate plants. Ant nests are actually favorable to growing plants, adding nutrients to the soil, and ants protect some plants from certain pests, such as caterpillars, larvae, moths, and beetles.
That
said, there are times when ants can certainly be a pest. If you're trying
to have a picnic, and the ants are trying to join you, an easy way to
keep them away is to set the legs of the picnic table in pans of water.
And if ants are swarming over your garbage cans, and you're afraid of
what the garbage collectors are going to think, you can discourage them
by simply crushing the ones on the ground every time you pass by the cans.
Pretty soon they'll give up and go elsewhere (although not indoors, one
hopes). Planting tansy and peppermint around garbage cans is said to deter
both ants and flies.
When ants cause real problems in your garden, it is because of their fondness for the honeydew excreted by aphids, mealybugs, and scale. Look for ants scurrying up and down the stalks of plants or trunks of trees. To find out if they're up to no good, check for aphids or scale on the plant or tree. Look for the silvery sheen of honeydew or the black, sooty-looking mold that grows on it. If you find it, you need to stop those ants in their tracks. While you can get rid of aphids by hosing them off daily or spraying them with horticultural oil, you can best control these pests by eliminating the ants that protect them.
Prune the tree so that the trunk is its only contact with the soil. Then simply wrap the trunk with carpet tape or double-stick masking tape. Or, using wide masking tape, simply wrap one layer sticky side in next to a layer sticky side out. That way, if the ants try to go under the tape, they're still sure to get trapped. You can also paint the trunk of the tree with a band of sticky substance such as Stickem or Tanglefoot, or try grease-banding it with lard or petroleum jelly (use surgical gloves). Many people paint these substances right on the tree trunk, but that can damage the bark on some trees. Others first wrap the trunk with paper or cloth, then smear the barrier on that, but ants can be pretty persistent about getting through little crevices in the bark (see Aphids).
Other methods of discouraging ants outside include sprinkling bonemeal, powdered charcoal, powdered pyrethrum-silica gel dust, or diatomaceous earth around the base of a plant or tree, and placing boric acid ant bait along their trails.
Organic citrus growers have told us that using enough organic matter and compost to create a four-to-six-inch layer of mulch around the trees will discourage ants. And if you can keep the ants out of your trees for a few months, the beneficials will take over.
Ants
may herd aphids, but we can herd the ants by spraying their nest repeatedly
with water, thereby getting them to relocate to another part of the garden,
where they may not be as bothersome. They are one of the few insects able
to pick up and move their whole colony. Heavy rains keep ant populations
down by flooding the nests and drowning some of the ants, but in a drought,
ants multiply rapidly. Try destroying an ant nest by first spraying it
vigorously with water. When the ants come scurrying out with their eggs,
douse them with soapy water or a solution of blended orange or lemon peels,
or citrus oil, or dust them with diatomaceous earth. Boiling water poured
on the nest will also kill them.
Fire
Ants
The red imported fire ant (related to the native southern fire ant) is the
worst of the stinging ants and has become one of the major insect pests
in the southern states. Already it has appeared in Southern California,
where it threatens to change a famous outdoor lifestyle forever. More
dangerous, more aggressive, more destructive, and more prolific than any
other ants in this country, the only good thing that can be said about
fire ants is that they usually do not enter houses.
Their blister-raising stings are almost as painful as those of bees and sometimes cause severe allergic reactions and death. They build mounds that cause millions of dollars in damage to farm machinery, roads, and airports. And, while they eat pests such as the boll weevil, ticks, and cockroaches, they also eat everything else, including birds, lizards, mice, and other ant species, posing a real threat to biodiversity.
In spite of an expensive battle mounted against these ants, using a flood of highly toxic chlorinated hydrocarbons, they still thrive. They now produce "supercolonies" containing multiple queens that lay hundreds of eggs every hour. In fact, the insecticides caused more damage than the ants did. In Texas, where they have been called "the ant from hell," they have become something of a cultural phenomenon, with songs and even beauty contests in their honor.
Baits are tricky to use against these ants because the poison must pass through so many ant stomachs before it gets to the queen. But there are still safe ways to kill many of them and get them to move their nests.
Spiders, dragonflies, lizards, toads, and some birds will eat newly mated fire ant queens. Fortunately, progress is being made with importing the ants' natural enemies, left behind in Brazil. These include a phorid fly that injects its egg into the ant's thorax. After hatching, the maggot moves into the head of the ant, which after a few weeks literally falls off. After eating it out, the maggot then uses the head capsule for its own pupal case.
If you must use a pest control operator, find one who will broadcast a bait that contains an insect growth regulator such as abamectin. Don't let them talk you into something more toxic to the environment. Avermectin, a naturally occurring soil fungus, is also being used against fire ants.
When treating individual mounds, protect yourself from the fire ants' aggressive, multiple stings by wearing protective clothing, even rubber boots smeared with a sticky substance. Pick a cool day when the sun is out, because the colony (and, most important, the queen) will have moved up near the warmer surface. Sneak up on the nest (the ants are sensitive to vibration) and slowly pour a generous amount (one to five gallons) of boiling water into it. Other drenches that will not harm the environment include insecticidal soaps, citrus oil, vinegar, pyrethrum insecticides, or ammonia and water. (A folk remedy in Texas consists of filling up on beer and urinating on the nest.) These dousings may not succeed at first, but if they are repeated, the ants will eventually move.
