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How to Get Rid of Pharaoh Ants

how to get rid of pharaoh ants

Imagine walking into your home to find different spots filled with little ants moving on parallel lines. Baiting Pharaoh ants is one of the best methods to eliminate the ant colonies from your home. When selecting ant baits, choose the protein, sugar-based, and grease-based baits. Use a slow-acting bait as the instant killer baits will only eliminate the foraging ants. But if you use slow bait, the worker ants will carry the bait back to the colony to feed the nest workers, the queen, and her entire brood. Read on to find out how to get rid of Pharaoh ants.

Identifying

  • Terrain: Pharaoh ants prefer the indoors, and they live in vast colonies. They flourish in warm areas found in homes, restaurants, hospitals and food processing plants.
    Pharaon ants terrain
  • Features:
    Pharaoh Ant (Monomorium pharaonis)
    Pharaoh Ant (Monomorium pharaonis)
    Adult Pharaoh Ants are yellow on the upper part of their bodies and have a black or dark brown abdomen. They are tiny creatures, about 1/6th inch in length.
  • Food: Pharaon ant foodPharaoh ants prefer to nest near food sources in homes. They feed on proteins, other insects, oil and sweet stuff. Pharaoh ants will nest in your furniture, behind walls and appliances, behind baseboards, and underneath floors. These insects are a nuisance because they spread dangerous diseases to humans.
Hazard
Pharaoh ants are most dangerous in hospitals because they fester around patients’ wounds and contaminate them with harmful bacteria. In your home, pharaoh ants contaminate stored food. Once the ants invade your kitchen and bud when disturbed, they migrate making it harder to eliminate because of their huge colony size. So you might have to deal with several colonies instead of one.

Get Permanent Results by Removing Pharaoh Ants Naturally

To discourage pharaoh ants from setting colonies in your home use the powder trick because ants cannot climb over powder.

Other tricks include:

  • Place cucumber slices near entry points or cracks because ants hate cucumbers.
  • Draw chalk lines around your windowsills and doorways because it sticks to their feet, immobilizing the ants’ movements completely.
  • Sprinkle cayenne pepper or place bay leaves near entry points. Ants hate such scents.

  • Make a solution of water, vinegar and a few drops of tea tree oil.
  • Spray the mixture on your kitchen counter, around doorways, and on dry furniture. This trick diverts the ant trails, making them lose their scent spots and stop coming around.

Effective Ways to Kill Pharaoh Ants and Control Building of Ant Colonies in Your Home

Ant problems are wearisome and time-consuming. But do not worry; there is hope on how you can get rid of pharaoh ants.

You can use Borax solution by doing the following:

  • Mix a lethal solution of Borax and sugar since ants are attracted to sweet things. Make a 50/50 combination of these two ingredients and place them in a cup. Pharaoh ants have an insatiable appetite for sweet things. The Borax and sugar mixture is a deadly trap that kills them instantly upon ingesting the laced ingredient.
    Borax and sugar
  • Another workable solution in killing Pharaoh ants is to store away food in tights containers. Refrigerate food, and always sprinkle baby powder or strategically place the borax mixture around your home.
    Food in containers

  • You can also dust some baby powder near the ants’ entry points to confuse the insects in your home and make them lose their scent trail, wander off to their death.
    Johnson's baby powder

You can also prevent their entry into your home by doing the following things:

  • Seal all possible entry points around your house, especially the cracks and small openings near your windows, doors, in the house foundation, and utility entrances.
  • Ensure that your outdoor trash cans are placed further away from your house. Also store away any wood piles in the outdoors, make sure the ban is away from your home too.

  • Trim trees branches and bushes away from your house.
  • Keep your kitchen counters and floors free of food crumbs and cleaned all the time.
  • Store food in airtight containers or tightly packed in the refrigerator.

How Baiting Pharaoh Ants Works

If not properly eliminated, Pharaoh ants can cause terrible havoc once they set base in your home. You must stop them, or else they may build colonies which will cost you a lot more to demolish all their nesting hideouts.

Selecting the right Ant Bait
When choosing bait, ensure you have the right ingredient baits mainly: Sugar or carb, grease/fat, and protein. When placing your bait, remove any food competition and leave the bait once the pharaoh ants start to feed on it.

Best Bait Products

  1. Maxforce Ant Bait Maxforce FC Ant Killer Bait Gelis effective against Pharaoh ants. The little creatures will carry the bait to the queen’s nest and slowly kill the entire colony. You’ll see the change within 3-5 days after placing the Maxforce Gel. The Ant Bait Gel provides sugar ingredients, a much-preferred feeding need for pharaoh ants. You can substitute the sugar with protein bait. Apply Marxforce gel in crevices and cracks where the ants dwell. For best results, dab the gel on different spots where you see ants entering and foraging your structures. The gel attracts the ants for approximately two weeks. Inspect and reapply the gel as needed.
  2. Advance 375A Ant Bait Advance 375A Granular ant baitcan be applied in cracks and crevices both indoors and outdoors to curb pharaoh ants from festering in your home. This bait formulation kills the ants using the combination of food and the delayed-action Abamectin insecticide. Repeat the bait applications as necessary. Do not use near or on food-handling areas. Advance 375A is also useful in bait stations for easy placement and cleaning. Abamectin insecticide’s aim is to decrease the worker ants’ population and halt egg production thereby causing the elimination of colony development.

Bait Stations that Trap

Ant baits are recommended for use in indoors because they feed the ants with the food baits mainly proteins, carbs, and greasy food like peanut butter or honey.

There are several types of baits accessible for mixing with the dangerous element of a baiting system.

Some of the best pharaoh ant baits include:

  • Maxforce Ant Bait StationMaxforce Ant Bait Stationkills ants in six hours, 90% ant population reductions within four days.
  • Advance 360A Ant Bait – Offers sugary and protein-based bait. The ideal combination for Pharaoh ants that have food variations.
    Advance 360A Dual Choice
  • Advance Liquid Ant BaitAnt bait stationMake a sugar and water formulation much preferred by ants. It kills the entire ant colony.

For effective ways on how to get rid of ants in the kitchen, use the bait on different stations to keep them fresh and lethal as needed. If ants hover around the bait station, you will know it’s working. Sometimes Pharaoh Ants switch their food choices in the middle of baiting. Check the quantities of your bait and switch where necessary until the ants accept your bait.

The Best Bait Killer

  • Active Ingredient: 0.05% Indoxacarb
  • Locations: Indoor/ Outdoor
  • Safe for kids and pets

Advion Ant Bait Gel is the best bait to kill Pharaoh ants. It’s a winning formula for ants because it provides sugar and moisture, a sweet combination for ants since they like to hover and feed on sugary foods. Advion Gel is a much-preferred combo that kills ant colonies at any stage. It also acts as an extended poison that tricks the ants to continuously feed on the bait until they succumb to their slow demise.

Pharaoh ants live in colonies and move in tiny armies.

Boric Acid: Guaranteed Homemade Pharaoh Ant Bait

Boric Acid is a powerful odorless Insecticide that is used to bait pharaoh ants. It’s a Long -term effective ant bait as long as it stays dry and placed where the insects crawl.

Spoon of sugar and Boric acidProblem: Small ants are the worst kind of insects to invade your home. Pharaoh ants stealthily create paths along tiny cracks in your walls and find their way into your kitchen cabinets or behind your kitchen appliances and fester near warm areas.

Natural, inexpensive methods have been used over the years as permanent ways of how to get rid of pharaoh ants.

Solution: Baits prepared from boric acid are the ideal killer for medium ants’ infestation in your home. Mix some sugar and the slow-acting boric acid and place it in small bowls near the ant’s passage. The ants will find the sugary mixture and carry the food to the nest where the queen and her workers reside. Within a few days, all the ants will begin to die, leaving little room for the ants to create new colonies around your home. Some more useful home-made baits work pretty well since they contain no insecticides.

Homemade baits include: Honey, Jelly, Sugar, Sugary corn syrup, Vegetable oil.

You can adjust the food ratio according to your observation and the magnitude of the pharaoh ants hovering around. Place the baits where there’s a considerable amount of ant activity. Sugar and syrup baits work 100% most of the time.

Why Spraying is the Best Solution for Your Kitchen Woes

Spraying the foraging pharaoh ants may bring temporary relief in the initial stages of the exercise. The worker ants that come out to look for food is just a small proportion of the ant’s force compared to the ones left in the colonies. However, using ants spray is quite practical when done strategically.

Spot the Queen Hole

The best way to get rid of pharaoh ants through spraying using insecticides is to identify their nesting hole where the queen hides. Once you discover their nest, it becomes easier to eliminate the crawling insects through spraying. Check for ant nests under the stones, firewood, boards, stumps, logs, and other debris in your compound.

Look for Cracks

Also, check-in moist areas around vegetation and your house foundation. Slowly spray in the holes to avoid scattering the tiny ants so that the insecticide liquid goes further in the cracks and holes. Drench the whole area, and along the colony path with your insecticide spray. Repeat this every few hours every day until all the pharaoh ants become too weak to feed or move the queen ant.

Pharaoh ants prosper in heated structures. Look for cracks around your kitchen and bathroom walls and furniture. To thwart pharaoh ants from your home, regularly clean your dishes and store foods in airtight containers. Keep your compound clean and the trash cans tightly closed.

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