Last updated on February 24th, 2020 at 05:10 pm
HAVE AN ANT PROBLEM IN THAILAND? HERE’S WHAT WORKED FOR ME
Even If You Don’t Live in Thailand
My wife and I recently bought a home in the suburbs of Bangkok. After living in apartments and condos for years, one thing I thought I would never have to deal with is an ant problem.
So I searched around for different ways on how to get rid of ants. There are lots of information out there and one of them has got to work for my situation.
But I specifically needed something that was non toxic; as we share our living space with three cats inside our house.
Ants thrive in Thailand’s hot and moist environment. And there are plenty of food sources as well for them. So when they find something they like they get determined like the Terminator.
So I came across a few non toxic to cats and humans ant deterrents. But there are lots of ant species. And discovered that one method might not work on certain ant species.
FIRST STEP – IDENTIFYING THE CULPRIT
So far I’ve come across 3 types of ants..
There are 3 methods that was the solution to my ant problem. However, if you don’t want to read through all this, my biggest tip is to keep your home clean.
- Keep Your House Clean
- Talcum Powder
- ARS Chalk
1. DON’T GIVE ANTS ANY FOOD…
Okay, so I wish it was that simple. But mother nature has made the ants one of the best sanitation workers on the planet. Those little suckers will find that piece of donut that dribbled out of your mouth and rolled under your couch.
Now if you’re a cat lover you will know that cats are not the tidiest eaters. Bits of kitty kibble and canned tuna typically end up on the floor near the food bowl after every single meal. So for my wife and I, keeping our house clean all the time is not that simple.
Cleaning up after your furry pals is important for an ant free house…
Ants being the little food seeking missiles will always find our cats’ leftovers. Matter of fact right after the first night inside our brand new home when we got back we found a bunch of ants surrounding our cats’ dry food bowl.
We even got the ant-proof food bowls where you can fill the edge of the bowl with water. Kind of like making a moat that ants can’t get pass. However, it’s the little bits of crumb or wet food that attract ants outside of the moat.
2. Talcum Powder (a.k.a. Baby Powder)
Ants don’t like walking on talcum powder supposedly. So they try to avoid it. I throw talcum powder on the areas where the ants make their port of entry. For me the ants usually come in through the gaps of my window frame.
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I put talcum powder on my window sill too...
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Talcum powder works great. Cinnamon seems to work only on carpenter ants...
On the picture above you will see some reddish brown stuff. That’s cinnamon. I read somewhere that cinnamon makes a great non toxic ant repellent. However it seems to work part of the time and I don’t know why.
But I’ve given up on cinnamon. It makes your place smell great. But gram for gram ground cinnamon is too expensive for my ant problems.
Talcum powder acts great as an ant deterrent. Cheap too and quite effective. But again not effective for too all types of ants.
Sometimes you just have to use something a bit stronger. Preferably something I can use outside of my home so I won’t poison my house kitty cats.
3. ARS Chalk
This chalk works great for small red ants, carpenter ants. But not so much for much larger black ants…
Like it says on the box, this little item is a cockroach and ant killer. I had a little ant problem on my second floor where I kept another set of dry cat food. It looked like small field ants. I used this ARS chalk in the morning after applying it where the ants were coming in from.
When I got back in the afternoon all the ants were gone. All I did was simply draw a line of ARS chalk around the small little crack under the stairs where I guess the queen ant was holed up. And by night time when I got home not one ant was in sight. ARS is some powerful stuff.
I decided to test out ARS chalk on some small red ants near the entrance of my home. As you can see on the second video after applying ARS chalk the ants seemed disoriented instantly. Eventually they died off. So ARS is quite the effective ant killer
From my short ant exterminating and prevent experience, not all methods work for all ants. As you can see on the video below, the larger black ants looked like they were not affected at all. Matter of fact the next day they were still around. Even right after I dumped talcum powder on top of them.
Luckily these types of ants haven’t found its way inside my house yet. They seem to stick mainly on the pavement sidewalk. Because as of writing they’re still there.
I haven’t tried this one out yet. But from my research this type of ant killer is the most effective…
Now there is something I’ve read somewhere that is quite effective at eliminating a small ant colony. It’s the one pictured above. And it contains boric acid. Ants take it back to the queen and thats how the entire nest gets a one way ticket to ant heaven.
Seems kind of drastic and I probably won’t resort to using it until I get into a real bad ant issue.
All kinds of pest control can be purchased easily at your local Tops Supermarket…
You can purchase all these over at your local Tops supermarket, Big C and maybe the 7 Elevens.
In Thailand it’s not difficult to locate bug killers and they usually charge 6000THB a year. And the exterminators will visit once every few months to spray around your property and check for termites.
Keeping your home clean is the best and most effective way to deter ants from invading your space. But if you find none of these solutions working for you, then you’ll have to go find a good exterminator.
Have any of my tips worked for you? Do you have any recommendations to handle an ant problem? Drop a comment below, thanks for reading!
