How is it that ants are always the heroes in children’s fables and movies, but when you find them in your kitchen in real life they might as well be six-legged supervillains?
But you don’t have to share your pantry with these eusocial menaces. With a little knowledge, the right tools, and a lot of persistence, you can show your unwanted guests the way out.
We spoke with two experts—an entomologist and a technical director at Terminix—about how to get rid of ants in your kitchen, your pantry, your living room, your hallways, your bathroom, and anywhere else in your home you want to be ant-free.
How Do Ants Get Inside Your Home?
First of all, that cartoon image of an ant general wearing an army helmet sniffing out your snacks with its antenna and then ordering its followers to invade your home, barbecue, or picnic? Apparently, scientists say, that’s not how it happens in real life. “It’s not that they detect the food from the outside,” says Molly Keck, an entomologist and integrated pest management program specialist with the Texas A&M AgriLife Extension outside of San Antonio. “They forage, then they make a trail. They’re not like bees that do more of the scouting and trailing.”
In fact, it’s often the case that ants get inside your house less for what’s inside than to escape what’s outside. “They may be coming inside because of flooding outside, because it’s freezing outside, or because it’s a drought,” says Keck.
Cody James Pace, associate certified entomologist and market technical director for Terminix, says ants find their way inside the home via cracks in walls, gaps around doors and windows, and vents. “Once inside, ants can establish trails along baseboards, under sinks, and near food storage areas,” Pace explains. “Ants can quickly and quietly invade your home,” laying down pheromones for other ants from their colony to follow. “Most ants are just a nuisance problem, but if they find their way into your pantry, they can get into open food containers, devouring anything they find,” he says.
How Do You Know What Kind of Ants You Have?
If you’ve got ants in your kitchen, it’s understandable that you’d want to skip ahead to the part about getting rid of them, but it’s not that simple.
“It really depends where you are—there are a lot of different species, and certain parts of the country have species that other parts don’t have,” says Keck. “Every species nests differently, forages differently, and has different management practices.”
For example, south central Texans dealing with ants in their kitchens are usually struggling with sugar ants, also called pharaoh ants; they could also encounter tawny crazy ants, which create huge swarms in the millions, or even army ants (though the type of army ant in Texas is almost entirely subterranean and not a serious risk to humans).
In most American homes, Pace says, the most common ants folks may be dealing with are Argentine ants (especially on the West Coast), odorous house ants, pavement ants, carpenter ants, fire ants (especially on the Gulf Coast), or crazy ants.
“To properly identify them often requires some level of magnification where you have to look at features on the exoskeleton, such as grooves, the number of segments in the antennae, and the number of nodes (like bumps on the waist) on the segment between the thorax and abdomen,” he says.
Of course, considering that there are over 15,000 known species of ants and not all of us are entomologists, it’s not a simple matter of whipping out your infestation’s Latin name with the help of the same magnifying glass you use for your stamp collection. But you can try to reach out to your local extension service, which should know which species you’re most likely dealing with in your area and suggest the best ways to eliminate them from your home. You can also speak to professional exterminators, who can visit your home and set up the appropriate treatment themselves—for a fee, of course.
Ultimately, the most important thing to know is that all ants (and all pests and even animals in general) are looking for three fundamental things. “They have to have food, water, and harborage,” says Keck. “If those three things are available in a home, that’s why they’ll be there.”
For food, “[a]ll of them prefer different things,” Keck says. “If they’re on your cake, you know they’re into sweet stuff. If they’re on potato chips, you know they’re into greasy stuff. But there are other ants [that] are just inside because it’s cold outside and they have found a cozy place in your house.”
Pace notes that most ants like sugary foods because it’s readily converted to energy for the nonstop workers. But, generally speaking, “when a colony is trying to grow and produce a lot of eggs,” they’re looking for protein. If they’re at the stage where they need to support a large colony, usually later in the summer, they forage for carbohydrates.
How Do You Get Rid of Ants in Your Home?
Getty Images / RHJ
Once you’ve figured out what the ants are eating, remove that food source. Then, it’s time to get rid of those chemical markers the initial ants left for the rest of the colony to follow. Vacuum the ant trails (any paths where you’ve seen ants, since the pheromones they leave for others from their colony will remain, but also the crumbs and any ants following it) and wipe the area down with soapy, warm water. Don’t use scented soap or chemical cleaners, which can contain fragrances that may actually attract more ants.
Find out where the ants are getting into the house by following their trails or looking for gaps to the exterior, then caulk those holes or plug them up with petroleum jelly. Then try laying down ant baits, which will work for many ant species. Popular and readily available brands include Terro, Hot Shot, Raid and Homeplus.
“Baits are a key tool for managing ants, and the only type of insecticide recommended in most situations,” says Pace. “Ants are attracted to the bait and recruit other workers to it. Workers carry small portions of the bait back to the nest, where it is transferred mouth to mouth to other workers, larvae, and queens to kill the entire colony.” Baits are safer and more effective than sprays, but that’s partially because they’re slower-acting—the point is for the forages to bring the poison back to the nest, not die instantly. Since baits take time, though, keep wiping down those ant trails until the baits start to take effect over the following days and weeks.
If you’re seeing an increase in the number of ants or ant trails, massive swarms, any evidence that the ants are actually nesting inside the building, structural damage to your house, or other serious issues, call in professional help.
What About Borax, Baking Soda, and Other Homemade Remedies?
While the two experts I spoke to favor the methods described above for getting rid of ants, many people swear by homemade solutions. One common DIY treatment for getting rid of ants is mixing Borax—also known as boric acid, a mineral salt that’s made up of boron, sodium, oxygen, and water—with sugar. The idea is that the ants will be attracted to the sugar and ingest the sugar and boric acid mixture, then head back to their colony and spread the poison to other ants, including the queen ant.
However, there are a few problems with this method. First off, Borax can be toxic to humans—especially infants—and pets if not applied properly. Additionally, it’s not always easy to know how much to use; too much of it may cause the ants not to eat the bait at all or to die before returning to their colonies, and too little of it may render the mixture ineffective. Different species of ants may take longer to react to the poison, and some may not even react at all. And of course, not all ants are attracted to sugar, in which case the mixture wouldn’t lure them in.
Other home remedies include mixing baking soda (another mineral salt) with confectioners’ sugar, which again poses an issue with ants who aren’t attracted to sugar. Solutions made up of dish soap, vinegar, and baking soda will remove the pheromone trail ants leave behind, making it harder to find their way around, but that still won’t prevent them from coming inside through holes or gaps in windows and doors.
How Do You Prevent Ants From Getting Inside Your Home?
What if you want to make sure you never have an ant problem in the first place?
Assuming you’re taking the basic precautions (fixing holes, broken windows, gaps in the thresholds of your doors, etc.) and practicing basic sanitation (not leaving food out, cleaning up regularly), you should be realistic about the fact that ants will, at least occasionally, get inside your house—unless you’re willing to hermetically seal your home, never go outside, and live out your life in the residential equivalent of a microprocessor factory.
“You can try to seal things up, but ants are tiny, so that’s nearly impossible,” says Keck. “I’m not sure there’s anything prevention-wise besides just taking care of the problem whenever you deduce it is a problem for you…in the South, it’s when fire ants get inside. Beyond that, there’s not a lot of preventative stuff you can do. Figure out how you got them, what you have, remove the things they nest or hide under. Prevention’s probably not possible for most ant species.”
Can You Get Rid of Ants Permanently?
In the long-term war of humans versus ants, the ants will always win, Keck says. You will never be able to get rid of all the ants that threaten your pantry.
“You’d have to nuke the world to be able to do that,” she says. “Some ants will pick up baits, some will not. With some ants, you can spray their trails, but with others, when you spray their trails they will bud.” By “budding” she means that the ants will start to fork off from their original trails and create new ones, making it even harder to eliminate them.
And even if you removed all the food from inside your home and ate out for every meal, the ants around your home will do what they do best: survive. They will simply continue to forage for foods outside, whether that be vegetables, fungus, or other insects. And when they have the opportunity or need to invade your home again—and you inevitably break down and order a pizza—they’ll be back.
How Do You Have an Ant-Free Picnic?
So far, we’ve been talking solely about keeping your home ant free. But when you’re picnicking outside, you’re the one who’s invading the ants’ home.
“If you don’t want ants at a picnic, don’t eat outside, where they are,” says Keck. “If you’re going to go outside with food, you have to expect them to come to you.”
The Takeaway
Ants are an inescapable fact of life. They were roaming the earth long before us and will continue to do so long after the last human is gone—in a lot of ways, it’s the ants’ planet and we’re the pesky new invaders. To deal with ants that have made it inside, try to identify the type of ants that may be entering your home, then make sure to eliminate their food sources, vacuum up their trails, seal any gaps in your home where they may be getting in, lay down bait, and keep your home clean. With a little bit of knowledge, a tiny bit of sleuthing, a lot of patience, and realistic expectations, you can make some headway in keeping the world of the ants on the outside of your front door.
