How to Get Rid of an Ant Infestation: A Quick Guide

It was supposed to be your house. But now it’s theirs.

Everywhere you look, more ants emerge: crawling across your countertops, getting into your food. It’s hard to even get a good night’s sleep when you’re worried about ants crawling along your face in the middle of the night. You needed these pests out yesterday, but how do you get rid of them while making sure they stay out?

Well, that’s where we come in. With this quick guide on how to get rid of an ant infestation, you’ll have a pest-free home in no time.

But enough preamble, right? Let’s get right into it!

Find the Nest

If you want to stop ants in their tracks, you first need to find out where their nest is. One way to do this is waiting until you see a trail of ants in your house and seeing where they go (as they are likely foraging to bring food back to the nest). If you want to speed up the process, you can put a drop or two of honey out to bait the ants out and find out their nest location much quicker.

Knowing what type of ant you’re dealing with will also aid in finding their nest. Carpenter ants, for example, burrow into wood to build their nests, meaning you can often find them in trees outside or inside wooden pieces in your house.

Once you’ve found the nest, you have your best shot at killing the queen inside. If the queen dies, the colony’s doomed (as there are no more fertile female ants to lay eggs).

Natural Remedies to Counter Ant Infestation

To take out ants without bringing pesticides that could injure children or pets in your home, try laying down an even mixture of white vinegar and water and tagging any ants you see with it. This kills them and scares off future intruders with its scent.

Diatomaceous earth (silicon dioxide) also works well, as it kills ants without providing a threat to kids or pets (it can prove irritating on the skin, however). For keeping ants out, you can use pepper, peppermint, tea tree oil, or detergent mixed with water around potential ant entrances to mess up the ant’s scent trails and keep them away. Make sure to seal up any holes the ants could get through too.

More Aggressive Techniques

For those looking for a more “scorched earth” approach, using ant sprays and traps will rack up a serious kill count in no time. You can also purchase poisoned bait the ants will take back to the colony, killing any ant who eats it.

Boiling water will also wipe out ant nests with extreme prejudice, though you’ll want to make sure no plant life you value is nearby. Otherwise, you risk the boiling water killing it too.

Call In the Experts

If all else fails, you’ll find the best results with getting rid of an ant infestation lie in contacting a pest control company to remove the ants for you. When you hire them, trained professionals will come to survey your property and determine what kind of ants you have and where their nest is.

From there, they will use a combination of controlled sprays and traps to take out the whole colony.

Achieving Victory

So, now that you have this quick guide on how to counter an ant infestation, what’s next? Well, if you’re looking for more tips and tricks on keeping pests out of your house for good, make sure to check out the other articles on our website and share them with any friends or family you know who are dealing with pest problems!