Homemade Sugar Ant Bait – It Works!

A few years back, I was plagued with little sugar ants crawling down the wall in my kitchen, running all over my counter tops and getting in my cupboards.  Once again, this year I noticed a few ants in the house.  I immediately got rid of them due to reports I had read previously that if you see an ant in your house, get rid of it……it is a scout ant, looking for food and upon finding something, it goes back to all the other ants to inform them of the find. 
Well, getting rid of the few ants I saw did not work.  The ants came marching, not one by one, but by oodles and oodles.  They were entering our home between the floor boards and linoleum by our front door.  In the past, I was able to get rid of them by using Hot Shot Liquid Ant Bait.

At the moment, I did not have any Hot Shot in the house so between the time of ordering some new Hot Shot, I resorted to looking on the internet for homemade, all natural ant bait remedies.  I found one that said to mix equal amounts of Borax and powdered sugar.  Didn’t work!  The ants were not even tempted by this and hardly even went by it to investigate.  So I thought I’d mix equal amounts of honey with the Borax to see what happened……BINGO.

They loved this mixture.  You can still see the Borax and powdered sugar on the floor and they weren’t even interested in it, but look how they are feasting on the Borax and honey mixture.

I carefully placed 8 little sticky note papers, drizzled with the Borax  and honey mixture all along their marching trail from my front door, along the hallway, through the kitchen and to an end cupboard where they had finally found their desired meal.
As you can see in the picture below, this mixture does dry out so you should replace it, at least every other day, or so.  It has actually been four days since I placed the first mixture down and you can see that I only have one ant on the mixture. 

For the past two days, I have occasionally seen an ant here and there but I want them ALL GONE…… so I am going to make one more fresh batch to give the few ants that are left, one last final feast.
As to whether this is a final fix, I’m not sure, only time will tell, but one thing I am sure of…..I have a whole lot less ants than I did before!

UPDATE:  I made another batch of ant bait and I guess it needed to be fresh because more ants (a whole lot less than in the beginning – maybe 20 or so) came to feast. 
The Hot Shot Ant Bait that I ordered came in the mail yesterday and I placed it on the floor close to the mixture I had made.

Between the two baits working, I have only seen three ants all morning.  I’m thinking the Hot Shot may work faster but the Borax and honey mixture sure dwindled them down……..WAY DOWN!

I also found this ant bait recipe on the internet……
Mix:
- 1/8 Cup Borax
- 1/2 Cup White Table Sugar
Combine the ingredients and spread carefully where you have seen the ants. The sugar will attract them and they will take the sugar and borax back to the nest. The borax breaks down the skeleton of the ant and they dehydrate. You should see results in one week or less.

And this one……I cut the recipe down quite a bit from the one posted on the internet.  I thought 1 1/2 cups of bait was way too much.



CAUTION……..Where these ant bait recipes contain Borax, I would not place them in areas where children or pets can get them.  The caution label on a box of Borax states this: Contains sodium tetraborate.  Avoid contact with eyes.  Do not take internally.