Okay, this is kind of gross. But if it helps someone else it is worth sharing. The area where we live in is absolutely saturated with LBA’s – little black ants. We have had every kind of bug guy out, and NOTHING seems to keep these dudes at bay. As long as they stay outside, we can live with it. But when the weather turns cold, or sometimes when we flood the yard (we have flood irrigation), they move inside.
I’m pretty sure the ants have setup a nest inside one (or more) our walls. But when they showed up in our closet, I felt like I needed to do something. I have heard the Borax and sugar works in getting rid of them (poisons the queen) but in my experience it never worked.
Until, I came across a YouTube video that contained the real “trick”. The recipe is simple but brilliant.
- Mix 1/2 cup sugar with 1 cup warm (or hot) water.
- Add 2 tables spoons 20 mule borax.
- Stir until everything dissolves
Now here’s the magic part: Soak up the syrup with cotton balls
The cotton balls really make all the difference. The mixture will be thicker than water, and sticky. But soaking it up with cotton balls allows you to drop the balls on an ant line.
But does it work? Check it out:
This was one of 5 cotton balls we dropped on the ant line. Within an hour of dropping them all 5 were swarmed with ants, but 24 hours later they were all virtually empty and the total number of visible ants had dropped to 4. That’s right FOUR. Total. You could count them on one hand.
In the past what would happen is we would spray, wipe, clean, and pray. Eventually the ants would show up somewhere else, usually within 12 hours. But with the Sugar Borax cotton balls, the ants seem to be receding, and not coming back.
So if you’ve got little black ants, give it a try. I hope it works as well for you as it did for me.