How Do You Get Rid of Ants in a Stanmore House?

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Step 1: Remove the Reward

• Wipe every sticky surface — the worktop, the ring under the honey jar, inside cupboards
• Store sugar, honey, jam and cereal in sealed containers
• Rinse recycling before it goes in the box
• Empty the bin and clean the rim and lid
• Lift pet bowls between meals
• Check under the toaster and along the unit plinth
• Deal with over-ripe fruit
• Clean under the fridge, where a spill ran and dried
• Check a utility or boot room — often overlooked

Step 2: Follow the Trail

• Watch which way they are going — the loaded ones are heading home
• Follow it to where it enters the room, then the building
• Go outside and pick it up on the other side of the wall
• Follow it across the patio, path, terrace or soil
• Look for fine heaps of excavated soil between slabs — that is the nest
• Note it, and take a photograph

Step 3: Seal the Entry Point

• Silicone sealant at a gap in a door threshold or window frame
• Filler at a mortar crack at low level
• Seal around a pipe penetration
• Check the extension join, if you have one
• Check a conservatory threshold and its junction with the house
• Fit a brush strip to a gappy external door
• Reseal a worn bead at a patio or French door

Sealing is genuinely effective for ants because, unlike mice, they will not chew through it. On a large property with many nests outside, it is the measure that matters most.

Step 4: Bait, Do Not Spray

• The ants you can see are perhaps 10% of the colony. Killing them changes nothing
• Bait is carried home and shared, including to the queen
• Which is why it works on a nest you cannot reach — under a patio slab, or a terrace
• Expect more ants for a day or two as they recruit to it
• Do not clean the trail up during that period
• Never spray pharaoh ants — spraying splits the colony

Read nextAnts Keep Returning to the Kitchen in Stanmore – Why? →

Leave the Garden Alone

Worth saying on a page about getting rid of ants.

• A large garden will have many nests. You are not going to clear them and there is no reason to
• Black garden ants damage nothing
• They are a food source for green woodpeckers and other wildlife
• They aerate soil and predate other invertebrates
• Treating the garden broadly is pointless and would be replaced within a season
• The target is the trail indoors, and the nest feeding it

What Does Not Work

• Spraying the trail. Covered above, and worth repeating
• Boiling water into a nest. Kills some, moves the rest, repeat next week
• Chalk, cinnamon, vinegar, lemon. Disrupt a trail briefly; the colony is unaffected
• Ultrasonic repellers. No credible evidence
• Sealing the entry while ignoring the food. They will find another way in
• Lifting a patio slab to find the nest — you will find it, and scatter it

Flying Ants

• A mating flight — winged males and new queens leaving established nests
• Synchronised by weather, which is why it happens everywhere on the same day
• Lasts hours, not weeks
• Needs no treatment. Close the windows
• On a large garden there will be a lot of them, and it still needs nothing

Related Questions

Do I need to treat ants in the garden?

No. Black garden ants outdoors damage nothing.

Why do they come back every summer?

Because there are nests outside and the entry point is still open. Sealing is what changes that.

Do ants damage the house?

Black garden ants do not. They do not eat wood or damage structure.