Reports of ants rocket in the UK during spring as they emerge from their winter homes but they can be hard to clear
Finding you have a stream of ants around your garden or even inside your home can be annoying and uncomfortable. According to pest clearing experts Pest UK, April is the time of year that they get most enquiries on how to clear the insects.
It said: “Depending on the weather they come out of hibernation (or over wintering, insects don’t hibernate in the same way that mammals and rodents do) in March or early April. Often ants in April will forage inside buildings as it may still be too cold outside.
“When its cold they can be difficult to control. The reasons for this are that the metabolism of the ants is still slow and so any uptake of insecticide will take time to work.
“Another reason is that only part of the nest may be active which means that it may take some time for ants from the rest of the nest to come into contact with the insecticides. The ants that you are seeing probably come from several nests.
“They follow pheromone trails left by ants and these trails will attract ants from many different nests. Control is not just finding the nest and killing it because most cases it will not just be one ants’ nest.”
The firm said it uses insecticide bait, a residual insecticide spray or a residual insecticide dust, adding that one or more of these types of treatments may be carried out.
However if you want to try a home grown treatment one expert set out their method using “ingredients you probably already have”. Thach Nguyen, a real estate expert, said: “If you got ant problem in your rental house or even your own primary house, here’s the way how to get rid of it.
“Now you probably have these ingredients already in house, Borox, sugar, cotton balls and water.” He said you should mix together three-quarters of a cup of water, one-quarter cup of sugar and three-quarters of a tablespoon of this Borax.
While Borax is not available on general sale in the UK Borax substitutes that are available will do the same job. These cost as little as £6 for 500g on Amazon.
The expert explained: “Then you take the cotton ball, say, like two or three or four of them, depending how many you need. You dip it inside this mixture where you made then you put these cotton balls where you see a lot, where the ant comes out, and you put it there.
“And then basically, they come and they got to drink this stuff. They’re gonna bring it back to the nest.
“They’re gonna kill all the colony. Now, the next day you wake up, you’re gonna see you ain’t have no ants.”
