Carpenter ants dislike strong scents like garlic, lavender, essential oils, and vinegar. These items might seem harmless for the nose of a human, but ants find these smells incredibly irritating. But aside from its irritating smell, vinegar also affects the behavior of carpenter ants.
If you're looking for a nontoxic dust, diatomaceous earth is an effective option. Use boric acid ant baits: Another way to get rid of carpenter ants is buying boric acid at a garden supply store, mixing it with powdered sugar, and applying it where you've seen the ants.
Carpenter ants are omnivorous and spend a great deal of time foraging for food to feed not only themselves but the colony as a whole. Ants have many natural predators as well. Some are much larger creatures, such as birds, reptiles, and mammals, but others are fellow arthropods.
Carpenter ant infestations, whether minor or severe, can be handled by utilizing many of the same measures as other ant species. Ant bait, insecticide dust, and insecticidal spray are the most common ant management techniques.
Carpenter ants typically feed on sweets, meats, and small insects. Check your cupboards for potential ant food sources. If you have flour, sugar, cereals, grains, or other foods sitting out or unsealed in your cabinets, these can attract carpenter ants into your home.
Try pouring a line of cream of tartar, red chili powder, paprika, or dried peppermint at the place where you think ants might be entering the house; they won't cross it. You can also try washing countertops, cabinets, and floors with equal parts vinegar and water.
Vinegar only remains effective for as long as the scent lingers. When the solution dries up, homeowners need to reapply the solution in the problem areas to keep ants away. However, it's important to remember that vinegar shouldn't be treated as the main line of defense against ant infestations.
Home Ant Control Tips
Windex, the glass cleaner, is a known insect killer. When you have an ant swarm in your house, spray them all with Windex and they will die nearly instantly. Windex can also eliminate some of the scent trails that ants follow to find food.
Dish soap: Combine two parts water and one part liquid dish soap, mix it up, and pour it into a spray bottle. The soap is toxic to carpenter ants and will kill them. As a DIY solution, you can also spray it around entry points to help ward off ants from getting into your home.
The truth is that they only tunnel through wood to create protected nests. The food they eat is commonly found outside their nests and consists of honeydew, meats, fats, and sweet foods such as syrup, jelly, and honey. As long as carpenter ants have these basic necessities, they will never truly go away.
The carpenter parent nests require a moist, damp tunneled environment. Tree stumps, decaying logs, boards, and buried logs are among the most popular hiding places. You may locate a parent nest in dishwashers, sinks, showers, bathtubs, and around bathroom and kitchen tiles if you have one.
Ants hate Vinegar. The smell of Vinegar will cause them to stay away from it or permanently leave the house. Ants crawl in a straight line, marching towards the food sources. The Vinegar solution will interfere with these pheromones, and the ants will get lost.
Use this white vinegar solution to spray all entry points of your home, try to spry all windows, doors, baseboards and the common paths that ants would travel within your home. Give about an hour for this solution to take effect, then after a few hours the ants should be dead.
Cayenne Pepper or Black Pepper
Both cayenne and black pepper repel ants. Ants hate cayenne pepper. Black pepper will work just as well too. Locate the source of the ant infestation problem, sprinkle some pepper around that area and if possible, create a wall that will stop the ants from accessing your household.
Squishing an ant in the kitchen can stimulate pheromone release as well, sending yet another invite to their colony. So while crushing them is an instant, convenient way to get rid of tiny ants, it could actually do more harm than good in the long run.
From what I have read, ants cannot differentiate between baking soda and powdered sugar because they are similar in size. The sugar attracts the ants, and the baking soda is what kills them: It reacts with the acid in their digestive system, and they explode.
Continual Carpenter Ant Protection
Outdoor sprays such as Phantom or Termidor are very effective at killing carpenter ants. Outdoor Liquid Ant Feeders such as the KM Ant Pro Ant Bait Station also provide excellent long term protection and only have to be refilled with new bait every 90 days.
Carpenter ants are not harmful to humans and pets as they usually don't bite. In rare cases, the bite may result in a burning sensation that resides for a few minutes. Carpenter ants can be dangerous to your home structure. These ants excavate wooded areas of properties and make them hollow.