Barrier to contain ants?
TG
crossing? In the past I have tried using cinnamon, ground black
pepper, and sage, but ants seem to tolerate these things when the ants
are intent on going somewhere.
In my kitchen I have a bait station that has been attracting many
Argentine ants for two weeks. They have a trail leading from a gap
above a baseboard, and the bait is on the floor nearby. Initially the
trail was self-contained, with ants only travelling between the bait
and the wall. However, about a week ago they began to scatter from the
bait station. The old trail is still active, but for some reason a lot
of ants use the bait station as jumping-off point to leave in random
directions into the room.
As I understand it, one should expect a bait station to take several
weeks to destroy a colony. But I would rather not have to deal with
ants scattered randomly on the kitchen floor throughout that time. I
tried to create barriers to enclose the bait and the trail and prevent
ants from venturing beyond that. This seems to be quite a challenge,
as the ants are very determined. I have tried these:
- Solution of borax and water. Stopped the ants until it dried up. It
also cannot be placed vertically, so the ants eventually walked along
the barrier until they reached the wall, then went up and around the
barrier.
- Line of dry borax powder spread about one inch thick. The ants
walked right over this, stumbling a bit.
- Spic-n-Span Pine household cleaner. I spread this fairly thin. It
kept the ants from crossing until it dried up.
- Paper masking tape with the sticky side up. Ants walk over this,
stumbling a bit.
