Sounds great!

That's a good idea for the kitchen area too!

2 other ideas I ran across recently (I had lots of ants this year!) are grass clippings (piled around the post or ??) and double sided tape.

I don't have any misgivings about annihilating ants and here's my recipe:

Mix sugar and borax (from the laundry aisle), add a bit of water to make it syrupy. Pour a little in a milk cap or other small plastic lid & place it where you see the ants. Keep the remainder in a small glass jar for future use.

We only use this indoors & you'd want to be careful of your pets of course. The borax is the active ingredient in the commercial product, Ant Terro. So this is a cheap alternative.

I will keep the dish soap in mind also as it would be very handy to use.

I'm with you, Susan, I HATE to see ANYTHING suffer! I did not know that about ants! I hope I remember it when I need to!!

I don't like to see anything suffer either... it was my understanding that the ants just wouldn't walk on it at all, a line they wouldn't cross (like a line of dish soap). I didn't try it so I don't know.

I'm glad you explained, Lydia......I was going to say the double-sized tape sounded like ant torture (as Suzieque said, like glue mouse traps--ugh), and therefore it's no wonder Paul McDonald ditched you. LOL

I can't torture insects either.

I'll try the dish soap, thanks for the tip.

I've used double-sided tape before, or just the sticky side, and they usually put one foot on it and then back up. They're not stupid enough to get firmly stuck. Just like using ant cups full of water. I never find dead ants floating in it, they touch it and turn around.

I believe ants trace a path guided by scent, so if you interrupt their path, they get all messed up. See a line of ants headed for your kitchen? Wash a big swath of the line and I bet they'd lose their way.

I'm sorry if I step on toes (even an ant's!) but I think people have to use common sense when it comes to dealing with "varmints" of any kind. I'm as big an animal lover as anyone I know, but Des Arc, Arkansas is probably the mosquito capital of the world and if I still lived there I wouldn't care a WHIT about animal rights! LOL

Ants in my house? I'm sorry but it's impossible to catch all of them and then release them. Spiders, I usually take outside, but ants? If they don't pay the utilities at my house, they aren't gonna make it out alive! LOL

Ya Ya - who gets out and moves turtles from the middle of the highway...........

Well, these ants were in my mailbox, not my house, so I could afford to be humane. We all have our standards. I personally snuff out every mosquito I can. And I have swatted a multitude of flies in my day. But I would rather open the window for a fly than get out the fly swatter. So far, this approach is working--partly because I haven't had many flies in the house. If we still had horses, it would be another story.

I've also killed a lot of fleas. And every tick I've ever encountered.

Susan - who is still mad at the Corvette-driving S.O.B. who came around the curve too fast and ran over the turtle she'd pulled over to save.

We get over run with ants every spring in our house...this year I tried the honey/borax mix and it seems to have worked :)

To keep the ants off the hummers feeder i spray the pole with Pam cooking spray.Works great,and lasts a long time.
Kathi

I use common sense in dealing with insects around the house, but I prefer to use non-painful techniques when possible.

If I have a choice of torturing or not torturing, I'll use non-torturing techniques every time.

Do you think the dish soap would work on this big fire ant mound in our front yard? It's been there for years- I've not been kind to them at all. One year I poured pan after pan of boiling water over them- they didn't move. DH said they probably thought it was a sauna. I'll try the dish soap and see what happens. They may just move to another spot in the yard though.

I have fought fire ants, red ants, wee bitty ants, etc. I tried interrupting their scent trail with vinegar, clorox, lysol, even smashing everyone I saw with great vengeance, etc, but nothing worked. (I have never heard of the tape method before, but it works for flies!)

I finally resorted to a pest control company.

Now, I see very few ants.

I wasn't raised in the country. I'm a city girl. I have little tolerance for creepy crawlies. Besides, I'm allergic to most insect bites.

I won't stomp on an ant, when I was a kid we believed that doing so would make it rain! But I won't torture them. I do get a bit protective of spiders, they eradicated a fly problem I had in my fish filters. Te only critter I will smoosh is an earwig, those things give me the willies.

Ya Ya - who gets out and moves turtles from the middle of the highway.......... I do!!!
Dang if it would really rain I will get out there and stomp all over our ant bed.We need so bad.

I think YaYa meant that SHE gets out and moves turtles. So do I, so does Woody. One day we were in a hurry and a tiny turtle was in the road. We pulled up next to it, snatched it up, put it in Woody's ball cap and drove him 30 miles to our errand. Showed him off, brought him back and dropped him off where we found him, but off the road, in the direction he was headed initially. :) The people at the vet's office were amazed at how tiny he was, about the size of a flat walnut, maybe.

If these were imported fire ants at the base of the mail box, you'd be inclined to get rid of them in a hurry. I've seen them swarm the inside of a mailbox. Anyone stung by even one fire ant will soon feel differently about the need to get rid of them in any location where people, pets, livestock, baby birds, etc. frequent.

gmom, dishsoap will not work for your big fire ant mound. Invest in a small canister of Amdro, still the best product around for fire ants. It's a bait, so it need to be sprinkled gently around the mound...do not disturb the ants when applying. They will soon come and get the little granules, take them down into the nesting chambers and it will eventually (over a couple of days) get fed to everybody, including the queen. Once the queen dies, the colony will cease to exist.

A mature fire ant colony can have chambers that go down 2 to 3 feet, with tunnel systems much deeper than that. That's why boiling water, dish soap, and other physical deterrents simply can't work. Amdro, as a true bait, entices the ants to do all the work.

The only insects I kill are house flies and fleas and ticks. I love spiders and keep them in my pantry. No more moths any more. I saw someone freaking out over a bee yesterday..swatting it. I told her honey bees are the most gentle little creature and will never sting unless swatted. I have 1000's in my backyard in my hive and never get stung.

To keep ants out of the house, each spring I sprinkle cornmeal around the foundation of the house. I didn't see any ants lsst year and only one this year so it seems to be working. I think I read this tip on this forum a couple of years ago.

rhizo, thanks. I'll get Amdro and give it a try.

Cucumber peels will also work.

I had a co-worker who swore the best way to deal with fire ants was to take a scoop of mound from one nest and mix it with another nest. He said the ants are territorial and will kill each other. I don't know if it works or not. We have a lawn service take care of our yard.

nanatricia, FlamingO had it correct. I DO move turtles from the middle of the road! LOL

Sorry I gave you the wrong impression with what I wrote.

My Grandmother used cucumber peels. She also killed ants by pouring boiling water over them. Cruel,yes. But ants don't have the nervous system of a human. So I pass her advice along.

But ants don't have the nervous system of a human.

I don't know how an ant's nervous system compares to a human's. But to see an injured ant writhing in (what I assume is) pain, or watch them frantically trying to carry their eggs to safety, leaves no doubt that they have one.

Boiling water sounds quick, at any rate.

Uh-oh.......I must report that the dish detergent had to be reapplied. Either that or I missed a spot when I painted it on the first time. Ants set up housekeeping in a far corner of the mailbox this morning. It's quite possible I didn't cover that area before.