Household Pests, Odorous House Ants

[the dufferz]

Has anybody had the priveledge of dealing with the pesky odorous house ants? If not I will tell you about it a bit later, but wanted to know for now if anyone has had them.... we have had them for about 7 years... yuck!

Duff

[CityDataForumSux]

We get ants out my way. Sometimes it can get so bad that if you leave somthin out they will find it with in days. One time i was sleepin and I woke up cause i felt a prickling on my arm. When I woke up my arm was part of the path the ants were taking to get to a half drunk 7 up bottle id left on my desk.

Anyways ant stakes are what we use. Put some around the house and some in the house. Its got somthin that attracts the ants, they think its food, bring it back to the queen and the colony, and the colony gets pretty much whiped out. We usually do this a few times in the summer. Seems as fast as you kill em off, next summer they are back. Kinda makes you wonder how many of them critters are downt here.

[the dufferz]

sux,

do these buggers smell rancid if you squish them?

Duff

[Wyody]

I'm not sure I know what ants you refer to, Duff.
In our area - and also back in SW Ohio, we have (had) "Sweet Ants". Tiny multitudinous hordes of voracious critters.
The first batch of the year - a simple dose of "Terol" (not positive the spelling right now) ... a bit of sweet-liquid placed by the drop on a cardboard and they come, take it back to the next and wipe out the next.
A month later though, they come by the billions.
We have our places sprayed - not sure what they're using these days but I've seen people have great and safe results with a product called "Home Defense" both inside and out - available at your local hardware, WalMart, etc.
Comes in a jug with a sprayer.
I'll be reading to learn more of your stink-ants.

[CityDataForumSux]

Well no i cant say they have a particular smell, are the ants you got the big fat ones?

[the dufferz]

OK, let me tell you about these guys. They are very similar to sweet or sugar ants, and are small.

These guys nest in shallow ground, outside or inside behind walls or any crack large enough to live in. They have workers like regular ants but instead of a queen, each nest will have many queens. A queen lays one egg a day.

They go through a sugar cycle then a carb. cycle, so sweet poisons only sometime work.

if they sense a danger to the nest, some queens will take a group of workers and split away from the nest to form a new nest. Also when they sense the nest is in trouble they increase their egg laying production as a survival method.

Each nest has a friendly relationship with any other nest, even sharing resources.

When poisoned they go into hiding and "make" you think they are gone, but really they are building their nest to greater strength. So using poisons that they sense, they can actually get a larger population then if there was no poison at all. These buggers are HARD to get rid of!

Duff

[CityDataForumSux]

Thats nutts! Kinda reminds me of how virus's are starting to become more and more immune to antibiotics!

[Panterro]

PISS ANTS! Gotta love the nasty smell they leave behind huh DUFF! we have them in El Paso.

Pissant, Piss Ants, Small Ant Pests, Sugar Ants