How to Get Rid of Ants In Your Kitchen
Pest control experts share top tips to repel ants in the kitchen.
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By Layla Khoury-Hanold for Food Network Kitchen
Layla Khoury-Hanold is a contributor at Food Network.
If you’ve squashed an ant on your kitchen countertop, you’ve likely discovered that that’s not the end of the problem. Where there’s one ant, there may be a colony nearby, and getting rid of ants in your kitchen can be a pesky and time-consuming task. For more info on how to get rid of ants in your kitchen and how to prevent ants in the first place, we consulted Ian Williams, an entomologist with Orkin, a national pest control company, and Stew Clark, a pest control expert and inventor of the liquid ant bait stations produced by Terro, a leading brand of home insect control products.
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How to Get Rid of Ants In Your Kitchen
Step 1: Determine the Type of Ant
First, it's important to determine which type of ants are in your kitchen. Typically, Clark says, small black ants are the main culprit in home kitchen invasions, of which there are several different species. Large black ants, also known as carpenter ants, are more likely to be found in the bathroom and require contacting a pest control expert.
Step 2: Lay Down Liquid Ant Bait
Assuming you have a species of small black ants in your kitchen, Clark suggests addressing the problem by purchasing and laying down a liquid ant bait product (such as Terro) wherever you see the ants and then waiting for a couple days for the ants to die off. If that doesn’t work, Clark baits outside where the suspected point of entry is.
Step 3: If All Else Fails, Call a Professional
But if you don't see results after a week, or the problem returns, it's time to call a professional. “Getting rid of ants and keeping them out of homes and buildings is an ongoing process, not a one-time treatment and can vary significantly with the species of ant,” Williams says. “Pest control experts are trained to help manage different types of ants and ant infestations.”
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How to Kill Ants Naturally
If you want to kill ants naturally, without using any insecticide inside your house, Clark suggests setting a glue trap. Then you can determine where the ants are coming from and apply liquid ant bait at the point of entry on your home's exterior.
Products labelled as "natural pest control" are classified as 25(b) products and are made only with ingredients that are listed on the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)'s approved list, such as mint oil or orange oil. Therefore, they can be classified as a minimum risk pesticide and federal registration is not required. Since federal trials aren't required for these types of products, their "minimum risk" claims or product effectiveness can't be verified; some states conduct their own trials and testing. Clark says that from a toxicity standpoint, Terro is the same as borax soap, which is often used as a natural cleaning agent or laundry detergent, and is listed within the EPA's safest classification.
There are a variety of home-spun remedies circulating online, but these solutions’ results vary widely. Furthermore, they don’t solve the problem of getting rid of ant infestations nor do they repel new ants from entering. Some theories posit that the potent smell of vinegar is a deterrent to ants and that it can cover up the smell of the ant’s pheromone trails, preventing additional ants from the colony from entering. But Williams cautions that this hasn’t been proven. Williams says, “You can use vinegar as a general cleaning solution, however like most cleaners, it does not leave anything behind that either continues to clean nor repel ants after it dries.”
How to Prevent Ants In the First Place
You can prevent ants in the first place by keeping your kitchen clean, dry and sealed. But Clark warns that preventing ants 100 percent is especially challenging in warmer climates, like in Florida and Southern California, where there are higher volumes of certain species.
Williams and Clark offer their expert tips for preventing ants:
- Keep kitchen surfaces clean: Clean your kitchen surfaces regularly to remove food and drink particles. “A sudden ant infestation in your kitchen means there is an exposed food source somewhere,” Williams says. “Once the ants determine the location, they form long trails to connect their colonies to the food source.”
- Keep food and sweets sealed: Ensure that all your food, especially sweets, is stored in tightly sealed containers. “Ants have an extremely perceptive sense of smell, with four to five times more odor receptors than most other insects,” Williams says. “Ants are opportunistic foragers that have a knack for finding any food we leave out.”
- Seal points of entry: Ants can sneak into the house through cracks in door frames, under the door and windows. “From windows to glass doors, Orkin recommends securing all possible ant entry points,” Williams says. An inexpensive tube of silicone caulk will do the trick.
- Check for drips: Be sure to check that all water sources, including the kitchen sink, are completely turned off. “While ants typically don’t invade homes for water alone, certain ant species are attracted to dampness that is often the result of a water leak,” Williams says.
- Check for wood piles: "Look around the foundation of your house and make sure there isn’t any wood piled up," Clark says. "It should be relatively clear, with no branches leaning up against the house."
- Bait outside the kitchen window: "Put liquid ant bait outside first so they run into bait there and don’t come inside," Clark says.
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