Bees, ants, update

[beth_leonard]

Shortly before Amber was born, we had honeybees in our house. The final resolution to removing the honey was to drill a small hole to allow the ants to get in to remove the honey for use instead of hiring an expensive contractor.


While we may have saved a lot of money to do so, now we have the largest, most healthy, ant colony I've ever seen right above our kitchen. While there were maybe 30-40 honey bees dead in our overhead kitchen lighting when I removed them, there are easily over 1000 ant carcases there now.

It took the ants a few weeks to find the honey, but when they did it was noticable outside with a very active ant colony and a continuous stream of ants several feet wide going up our wall and disappearing into the wallboard. When they finally started making foreys into other areas of our kitchen, I decided enough honey had been removed and sprayed the base of the house with raid, in an attempt to make them go away. I also grouted a few holes through which they had been entering.

I thought it had worked, until today they were coming in with a vengence. We've had the first rain of the season recently. Within hours we went from an ant-free kitchen to a half-inch wide stream of ants. I eliminated them twice from two different locations, but they seem to just keep coming. Raid won't be enough for this colony I fear, I need to go buy some more combat colony-kill ant bait (of the type that Peter has picked up and put in his mouth before.)

Luckily Amber isn't mobile yet.
--Beth

Comments

[patrissimo.livejournal.com]

it's like using a tiger to catch the shark that's chasing you...sure it gets Mr. Fins off your tail, but then you have Mr. Spots to deal with.

Err...something.

[djsendai.livejournal.com]

"no problem, we've managed to breed a special species of gorilla that thrives entirely on snake meat" :)

so what she needs is something that consumes the ants, beatles perhaps. Then you just haul out some wasps to eat the beatles.

And so on... ;)

Not too surprising, it seems that the "introduction of natural predators" appears to be a pretty common solution to her problem. Plenty of places in south texas try setting up bat-roosts to help cut down on mosquito populations, and i know members of my family have been pretty used to having barn-cats around to help keep rodent populations under control.

Sadly there's not enough natural predators for idiots in San Fernando valley :P

[beth_leonard]

I got a laugh thinking of the "natural predator" of honey as the ant.

What is the natural predator of the ant? Spiders? Inside my house I think I prefer thousands of ants to 100's of spiders, especially with the baby. Maybe I could get crickets to eat the ants and then get mice to eat the crickets and convince Jon we need a cat to chase the mice...

Jon is allergic to cats but I now see why many households could decide to keep them. As food-chain members go, they're much more palatable to keep on purpose.

--Beth

[djsendai.livejournal.com]

ah, another native-texas source, the Armadillo!

then of course she'll have to deal with a squirrelly mob of Armadillos :)

[kirin]

But armadillos are adorable. I support this solution. Pity the climate where I live isn't suitable for them, or I'd have to find some to help with my occasional kitchen ants. Plus, when they roll themselves up they could double as a cat toy.

[dushai.livejournal.com]

Ants don't like to cross lines of cayenne powder, and I hear cinnamon works also. In my personal experience, this isn't enough (I still needed to use nasty chemicals), but it was a useful tool in my arsenal. It might be an even more useful tool for those with young children.

[jon-leonard.livejournal.com]

I can hear it now: Peter informing me that the ants are too spicy.

Well, I think he knows better than to try to eat ants. Maybe.

[songmonk.livejournal.com]

I absolutely detest ants. :-(

[beth_leonard]

They're not dangerous though, just gross. (I hope!)

Luckily today they don't seem to be back yet. Now I just have to re-wash all of the clean dishes in the cubbord...