Black ants in the house and apartment, what to do if they appear, how to get rid of them?

Insects play an important role in human life. Some of them are beneficial, stimulating plant growth, while others can cause significant harm, damaging garden plants.

Therefore, the question of benefit or harm remains open to this day. One of the many types of insects that can often be found in a summer cottage are black ants.

A radical method of pest control is the use of pesticides that are sprayed on vegetation. Chemical reagents, the harmful components of which fall on the foliage and spread through the air, poisoning pests at home is dangerous, since household members and pets may suffer from this.

Therefore, to combat black ants, you need to select special means, or call exterminators for help.

How to fight

If at least one black ant is found at home, you can be sure that a whole colony will soon appear. Scouts are responsible for searching for food, and when they find it, they attract their fellows to the feeding site.

They, in turn, create living, swarming paths, delivering food to the anthill for feeding the offspring and the queen. Therefore, if you see one or more individuals in the kitchen (a place abounding in edibles), you need to take effective measures to destroy them.

There are several ways to deal with ants . You can use chemical reagents or try to apply folk advice. The main thing is to understand that before you get rid of black ants in the house, you need to thoroughly study possible control methods so as not to harm your health.

Household chemicals

Many types of chemical reagents have been invented that have a detrimental effect on household pests.

These include:

• gel-based insecticides: Global, Clean House, Great Warrior, Triple Strike, Rubit, Brownie, Fas, Raptor, Assault;
• insecticidal aerosols: Raptor “Destruction of crawling insects”; concentrated agent for spray Get, Kombat, Clean House;
• poisonous substances in the form of powders, pencils: Pyrethrum powder, Delicia, Muratsid, Mashenka chalk;
• toxic traps: Clean House, Trap, Taracid

When using household chemicals against black ants attacking your home, you should carefully read the methods of use and dosage.

If you use drugs incorrectly, you can cause serious harm to your health.

Folk remedies

Before getting rid of black ants in an apartment, you need to carefully analyze the available folk methods so as not to harm yourself, loved ones, or pets.

The most common methods of struggle:

• in a saucer with sweet contents (jam, jam, honey), add 1 teaspoon of boric acid, 2 teaspoons of yeast, place in places where insects accumulate;
• to disorient scouts, once a week you can treat ant paths with garlic juice, black pepper extract, coffee grounds, citrus fruits;
• Pour cleaning products into a container with a spray bottle and periodically spray on the floor, window sills, and countertops;
• in a country house, it is recommended to periodically treat the interior surfaces of the premises with kerosene;
• To eliminate pests, the baseboards, corners, and cracks are sealed with double-sided tape.

In addition, specialized stores sell various ultrasonic traps that are placed around the house to repel insects.

Traditional methods

Most often, these methods are no worse in effectiveness, but are safer for the health of people and pets.

Repelling with an unpleasant odor

There are a number of herbs and foods that small black insects simply cannot tolerate. But this option is only suitable as a temporary one: it will only scare away the ants, but there will still be a possibility of them returning.

What you need to do: place dried chamomile flowers around the apartment. You can also use anise, cloves, peppermint, sunflower oil, pepper, garlic.

Sweet trap

Pour water into a deep container, add 2 tbsp. lie honey or jam. Place the jar where ants are common. Insects will crawl inside to feed, but will not be able to get out.

Using products that are not digestible in the stomach of insects

Ants love the smell and taste of cornmeal, but their digestive systems cannot handle it. Sprinkle flour along travel paths.

Starch and coffee grounds will have the same effect.

Use of a poisonous substance

Borax or boric acid is harmful to ants. Mix this powder with a small amount of water, add honey or jam. Place the resulting mixture on saucers and place it in the corners of the house, on ant paths. The ant will taste the treat itself, and will also definitely take some of the treat to the colony. This will cause infection of most of the anthill. Another advantage of this method is that the poison does not begin to act immediately, but after 2 hours, i.e. the individual will have time to return to the anthill.

Foundation treatment

If ants have attacked a private house, then try this option: coat the foundation of the house outside with creosote. This will prevent insects from entering the home.

Types of insects

There are more than 8,000 species of black ants. Their population is constantly growing, forming new varieties, with some changes in color, behavioral characteristics, and preferred habitats.

Commonly encountered species include:

• black garden ants. They build anthills on the soil, feed on rotten wood, rotten fruit, and fallen leaves;
• Camponotus (carpenter ants) are characterized by a bright red or black-red color, up to 1.2 cm long. Protecting themselves from the enemy, they emit a specific smell. They feed on insects, carrion, and sweet rotten fruits;
• small black ants up to 3 mm in size that live in houses emit an odorous liquid when they are crushed. From food they prefer sweets, honeydew, weak dying insects;
• turf insects are black-brown or black in color. They feed on sweets, fatty foods, and insects. Active at night. They live under tree roots, paving slabs, in turf, and fight among themselves in colonies;
• fast or crazy populations are characterized by chaotic, erratic movements, often going off the route. They are yellow or black in color.

Large black ants can live both in garden plots and sneak into apartments, causing harm to humans.

Processing stages

You need to understand that the female and the laid larvae are located in the very depths of the anthill. If working individuals sense danger, they try to move them even further.

Therefore, eliminating even the majority of the representatives of the colony will not help solve the problem, because after a short time the queen will continue to produce new ants.

Before processing, the following measures must be taken:

1. Move furniture away from the walls.
2. Carry out wet cleaning of the entire premises.
3. Remove vegetation from the apartment, hide food and groceries in a specially designated place.
4. Eliminate the presence of children and pets in the house. It is ideal if the room is “bare” so that it is possible to get to every corner, thereby getting closer to the uterus and larvae.

The processing process is carried out in the following sequence:

1. Searching for places where arthropods accumulate, identifying nests by following trails.
2. Spraying an insecticidal substance in the suspected habitats of ants and their travel paths.
3. Prevention. It should be noted that after treatment, some of the ants located farthest away will begin to search for a way to survive - they will begin to move through ventilation systems, cracks, holes in the camp, and the floor.

How they penetrate houses and plots

Black ants use many ways to enter apartments and gardens:

• in search of food and warmth, adult individuals crawl into basements, into attics, and enter rooms through ventilation holes;
• if one of the neighbors poisons black ants in their apartment, they find tiny loopholes to move to a safe place;
• in the warm season, individuals with wings can enter the house through an open window;
• If there are constantly crumbs and other food remains on the floor in the kitchen, this attracts insects; they crawl through narrow cracks in the walls, under the baseboards.

In addition, ants in an apartment can be brought from the street on the fur of pets after a walk.

Lifestyle Features

The black ant belongs to the family of ants. Domestic ants, like wild ones, live in colonies in which a strict hierarchy is maintained. The main thing is the uterus, on which prosperity and population growth depend. The largest group consists of working ants.

Their responsibilities include construction, obtaining food, caring for offspring, and maintaining the queen. Soldier ants have more massive mandibles, used for attack and defense.

Males and females are larger than workers and grow wings during mating season. Males are killed after mating, and fertilized females fly away to create a new colony. At the initial stage of building an anthill, there may be several females in order to quickly increase the number of workers. But as the colony grows, only one queen remains. In adult ants, plant foods predominate in their diet, while small ones prefer a protein diet, but both of them have a sweet tooth.

Damage caused

Despite the fact that insects benefit humans by eating carrion, fallen rotten fruits,

they can cause serious harm to gardening:

• they leave behind aphids, sucking the juice of the young foliage of plants;
• arranging anthills on lawns spoils the aesthetic appearance;
• eat the roots of trees, other green spaces, foliage, sweet vegetables, berries, root crops;
• spread harmful bacteria throughout the garden plot, infecting plants.

Black ants living in houses are also harmful:

• carrying the remains of household waste and technical waste, they bring dangerous bacteria into the apartment;
• damage food products;
• They carry leftover food around the rooms, creating favorable conditions for the development of fungus and mold.

If even one individual of an insect of this species is detected, measures aimed at destruction should be immediately taken.

Fighting ants: necessary means and tools

You can fight creeping creatures using improvised means. In this case, true folk recipes, tested over the years, will come to the rescue.

Despite criticism from an environmental point of view, chemicals and additives do an excellent job of eliminating insects. Gels, aerosols and crayons have a composition that does not include substances hazardous to people, so the use of chemicals is acceptable.

Important! If children or animals live in the house, then using chemicals is doubly dangerous. In this case, people give preference to special traps. They are placed in a place inaccessible to children, and the ants that get there die, leaving the household alone.

When is it time to call an exterminator?

If black ants are found in small numbers, you can try to deal with them yourself, using chemicals or traditional methods. However, it is not always possible to cope with pests on your own, especially in a neglected situation when insects begin to build anthills right in your home. In this case, you will have to resort to the help of specialists

Having in their arsenal special equipment and effective chemical reagents that cannot be purchased in a store, exterminators carefully treat every corner of the apartment, resulting in the instant death of pests. It usually takes some time to process the premises.

Therefore, specialists carry out the treatment only after the owners leave the apartment for several days. This is important, since potent poisons destroy not only large insects, but also have a detrimental effect on the health of humans and animals. Processing is carried out in special suits and protective masks.

If black ants are found in an apartment building, the best solution would be to unite the neighbors of the nearest apartments to carry out the disinfestation procedure. This significantly reduces the risk of adults spreading to large areas.

To prevent the reappearance of pests, the premises are re-treated after a few days.

Comparison table of black ant remedies

Disinsection service

But still, the ideal option is to call a special service that will destroy the entire colony of ants along with the queen. The pest control service is not a waste of money - they are professionals who know how and with what methods and drugs to defeat this scourge, and do it in the shortest possible time. Here you need to keep in mind that very toxic substances may be used, and you will have to leave the house for 1-2 days at the time of treatment.

Ants in a wooden house are as diligent in seizing territory as they are in their work, and if they have settled in the house, they will not leave of their own free will, so you need to act immediately and drive them out.

Technical news

It is also proposed to use a device - an ultrasonic repeller, which is designed to repel most insects, including rats and mice.

But so far the effectiveness of this device is in doubt, since there are reviews of people for whom the repeller helped solve the problem, and there are also those for whom the purchase of the device was in vain.