The ones who are "cringing" at polluting the earth with pesticides......you must be from California. I promise you the earth will not fall off its axis nor will it cause you another quake if you take the ants out with a chemical. You allow the government to pollute millions with a flu vaccine that contains harmful ingredients. You probably are first in line to get it. Your government produces radioactive materials and your worried about a chemical killing an aggravating pest. Your oceans are polluted with gas, oil, fecal matter dumped from heads on boats. Yet dont spray a chemical for ants? I'm so sick of tree hugger mentality. Show me action instead of reaction "words" to problems. How about you get out and plant trees to replenish what loggers have cut to build your table, couch, chair, doors, and house. Tell the gov to stop polluting your earth. OR ACCEPT THE FACT THAT THIS IS LIFE.we are the top of the food chain as long as we use materials that God gave us the intelligence to produce. I will never support your beliefs as long as you are the type of people who tell others ...you can't put a barrel to catch rainwater coming off your roof to be used as you wish! GOD MADE THAT WATER! I understand that aquifers need to be replenished. But does the rainwater caught by the few actually hurt the water supply? It's a 55 gallon barrel. And it doesn't catch 1/3 of that after a rain. So spray for your ants, put out granules to kill or run those pesky ants, termites,roaches,spiders,Grubbs,beetles,etc to your neighbors yards, who use natural deterrents(vinegar and water). Sorry I'm so harsh but by gosh sometimes you fight fire with fire. Death to ants...lol

Hi I thought all the ants in the world lived in florida lol. There are an unbelieveable variety of ants as well as termites here and of course they're active all year long. The only ones that really concern me are Fire and Carpenter ants,mainly because they bite and the termites for obvious reasons. I was convinced that the entire population of the world lived in fl until I went to Costa Rica. Those Leaf cutter and Army ants are downright scary !!lol There is a discussion on the orchids forum for using aspartame. Yes the artificial sweetener. I guess it works by bulimia lol Neighbor once told me to "Move to Mi in Dec. " guess that doesn't work lol gary

Related questions, but first the facts (so apologies for hijacking the thread!): the exterminator came by this week for his periodic visit. I have a lot of raised beds in the yard, and an arbor that has lost some slats over the years. Some of the wood has deteriorated and I was not surprised to hear from the exterminator that there were some termites in the back part of the yard. My wife is a total wreck now because the exterminator is hitting us up for a $1200 termite treatment plan. I don't see anything inside, and removed the affected wood that could easily be removed without major reconstruction of the bedding areas. The house is less than 20 years old. I do not have any raised beddings areas that touch the house. My questions: 1. should I treat the yard area and then see if there is evidence of critters around the house at a later date? 2. should I dismiss this as an exterminator trying to get to us for $1200? 3. should I treat the house and take the $1200 hit? I am open to a good education as well as other advice!

Thanks for the continued help! Yes, I saw that too! Fascinating to watch them 'climb the tower,' but takes more time. That's why the one plant was completely under water, the whole thing, foliage, flowers, whole thing. The ants were crawling around under water after 30 minutes. It got too dark to see in there after that, but the one plant that stayed in for 2 hours still had ants when I finally took it out. The ants seem to have no interest in anything inside, so I don't know if they're what you're calling house ants or not. I never saw this kind of ant in OH, or any of the smaller ones that take up residence in pots here, just much bigger black ones which were definitely interested in coming inside. AFAIK, plants don't have pests aside from the occasional aphid or white fly that any bunch of plants outside would have, which I dispose of/rinse or trim off. I look at every leaf at least 4-5x per week, almost every day. They're definitely not picking pots housing plants with pests as a basis for that decision. The pots that seem to have ants in them more often than not show signs of stress and slow growth from issues around the roots, not pests at the foliage. The primary issue is nests in pots. If I could isolate why they like some and are not interested in others, that would be awesome! I'd like to put a moat around the whole porch, sigh! Yes, there's a lot of pots, most of them hanging. The ants find those too. They can be temporarily thwarted by coating the hanging arms with veg oil, or backwards tape, but either method is short-lived, and messy or ugly. (Not that this conglomeration of cheap plastic pots is terribly attractive, but I'm working toward having the outside of all pots covered with enough dangling foliage to 'fix' that.) This is shady end of front porch. There are more pots on the back porch, around my potting area, hanging from several trees, and our dog's house.