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

[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...