Help! Ants are ruining my life.

Ants are incredible creatures. I read a book about them a while ago and have been in awe ever since. Their colonies can survive for up to 15 yrs. They are smart enough to build air conditioning, cemeteries, waste disposal areas, all sorts.

 

Thank you for the responses and the Ants aren’t active yet but I’m expecting a war this year. I have a minimum of 15 ant mounds that continue to come up throughout the year I squash them and pour boiling water on them but to no avail I believe it is 1 large nest or at the least 3-4 larger nest and I am 100% positive they are ants. I also had a miner bee nest that I protected last year as they were brilliant to watch, I am hoping they return.

 

I think I'm right in saying that the boiling water would have to kill the queen to have any lasting effect, and the chances of that are probably pretty slim.
To be honest there are so many ants in just one nest that it's likely to be a losing game, especially if they are in well established areas. Also the boiling water can harm the grass.

There are ants nests appearing in my back lawn already due to the heavy rainfall over the Winter. As soon as the grass dries, I sweep it with a stiff broom and they seem to disperse, but as soon as we get heavy rain again, back they come.

 

Ant nematodes worked for me. They don't kill the ants but cause them to move elsewhere. I stopped using them though because the green woodpeckers stopped coming when the ants had gone!

 

Please don't pour boiling water on them. They have a right to exist. A few mounds of soil here and there do not matter in the scheme of things. They are just going about their business, building a community, caring for their young, co-operating on a mind-boggling scale given the size of their brains. A truly impressive species.

 

Sprinkle some sugar in a thin trail from your house, or anything sweet, that leads the ants out of the house.
We have tons of nests here - black in the back garden, red in the front. Our cat never went out the garden, she liked to lie in the flowerbeds where most of the ants are, and there was no problem. Also, growing up we had tons of them too, never an issue with our dog.
I always mow the top off the red ants nests because I can't see them, but they just build them back up and disappear.

 

I like the sugar idea, thanks Mrs B.

 

How do the ants know which way to go? Your trail could lead them towards the house

 

BB3, I'm just going on the assumption that Asarum knows which direction is away from their house.

 

You beat me to it @BB3 … I was going to say that. There’ll need to be signage hoeing it’s a one-way street … or maybe some other garden residents could be recruited as traffic cops …. Perhaps the slugs could do something useful for once …

Sorry … I’ll get my coat. ….

 

I had an ants in the house problem last year and was looking in a local garden centre at some so called organic cure to get rid of them.
An assistant came up and said that's really good stuff, you will be back for more, I looked at him and said, well it obviously doesn't work then, and put it back on the shelf.
End of conversation.

I ended up trying some sticky bait like stuff, but not sure it worked as I find ants are only really a problem in late spring and early summer, after that the activity usually dies down.

 

A couple of ants here about a month ago, which I did think was a bit early. Black only, not too many and they have never bothered with the house. A bit of a pain when they decide it's "flying ant day" and I don't like the fact they guard the aphids! However I have seen a few birds going around picking them up and put them under their wings. I guess they are using them to get rid of mites?

 

The aphids are their farm animals ... and we humans certainly don't have a better track record when it comes to the welfare of "herds".

Flying ants day is, indeed, an inconvenience, but an annual "party parade" should be allowed, IMV.

 

The clove oil really worked for me. They decamped from under the paths at the front of the house and set up home well away near, and probably under, the tarmac footpath . This tribe obviously likes something solid over their heads.

 

I quite like the flying ant days, its part of summer.