Ants - amazing insects. If they are found somewhere, then exterminate them or drive them out not easy. Many insecticides they simply ignored to others quickly adapt, and others turn out to be too harmful for warm-blooded animals inhabitants of the house and garden plots.
One of the interesting folk remedies for fighting ants is ordinary yeast . We actively use them in cooking, but for insects they turned out to be a real nightmare, leading to a quick and rather painful death .
How can yeast be used to control insects, and is it dangerous to people and pets?
Operating principle
Let’s say right away that completely for people , and for most pets too. Direct poisoning of ants rarely occurs, since yeast can hardly be considered an integral part of their diet. The smell is bewitching for them pests will happily eat them right on the spot, as well as carry their prey en masse to the nest .
Over time, the yeast in the anthill will begin to ferment. This invariably leads to the fact that all other supplies become unusable . This leaves the ants with only two options :
- look for a new place of residence;
- clean the nest (they will not be able to do this);
- die of hunger.
The last scenario is the most likely. The fact is that they will have a surplus of other products and will quickly replenish their supplies. But insects are not smart enough to understand the harmful effects of yeast on food. As a result, the colony will certainly die out, albeit rather slowly.
How does yeast affect ants?
Yeast is an excellent bait for ants because it gives off an appetizing odor. Insects eat them with pleasure, especially in combination with other favorite foods. And since ants live in colonies and carry any prey to their lair, infection of other relatives, including offspring, is inevitable.
Yeast acts on the principle of poison against ants. Once in the stomach of insects, they begin to ferment, causing severe intoxication. And yeast products brought with them to the nest spoil other food supplies. Thus, one part of the ant family dies from severe poisoning, the other from hunger, and the third flees to places more favorable for life.
Interesting! The soil near the anthill contains 2 times more potassium and 10 times more phosphorus in a soluble state. These elements contribute to the rapid and high-quality growth of plants.
Ants eat not only crops, but also caterpillars, larvae and other harmful garden insects.
The process of killing ants using yeast is not the fastest. It will take some time for the product to ferment, become infected and die, and most importantly, the larvae and their queen. But the method is good in efficiency and safety. Moreover, it incurs virtually no material costs, which cannot be said about special insecticidal services.
How to use yeast against ants in an apartment
Ants are not always willing to attack yeast in its pure form . Their appetite largely depends on the area in which they live. It is noted that this remedy produces effect the central part of Russia , and slightly less in the north .
The southern regions cannot boast of the effectiveness of the method - the average temperature there is higher, the yeast spoils faster. Accordingly, ants are not always familiar with such a product. They will like the smell, but they will treat it with caution.
Yeast against ants can also be used in its pure form , but it will not be very attractive, and they will not develop a brutal appetite. The recipe is simple :
50-100 grams of yeast finely crumble into a bowl;- the same amount of sugar is mixed into them;
- the mixture is poured with warm water (in no case hot, otherwise the bait will quickly become unusable).
The mass is thoroughly mixed until it becomes a porridge. are molded from it , which are laid out near places where insects accumulate and pest routes.
Ants love sweets very much. Sugar mixed with wet yeast will give them a ravenous appetite . They will deliver treats to the nest in large quantities , constantly clogging their storage. The good news is that the implementation of this method does not require large financial and time expenditures .
The method is completely safe , yeast does not pollute the environment in any way. This product can be used both in a summer cottage and in an apartment. True, indoors the effect is still somewhat higher. The differences in the scale of the anthill are reflected - in nature they have several storage facilities at once.
Effective recipes
Ants are very fond of sweets, so they willingly damage flower beds in the garden, eating away the contents of the buds. In the garden, they are not averse to eating berries, sweet vegetables and root vegetables. By the way, it is ant colonies that provoke the appearance of aphids for the nectar they produce.
The following recipes using yeast will help you get rid of these garden pests:
- Yeast with sugar is the simplest, and therefore the most popular, remedy for ants. Yeast powder is mixed with granulated sugar in a ratio of approximately 1:1, poured into a saucer and placed in an area where insects are concentrated.
- Yeast with syrup. Add 5-6 tablespoons of sugar to a liter of water, then dissolve it in a water bath. After cooling the resulting syrup, add the dry yeast product into it. The mixture is used in a liquid state, poured into saucers and placed where the ants follow, or the ingredients are mixed into a thick paste, from which small balls are then rolled and laid out on the site.
The syrup must be cold or cool, otherwise the yeast will die from the high temperature and will be useless.
- Jam and yeast are an insidious and effective combination against ants, because these insects are partial to sweet fruits. Raspberry, currant and strawberry jam have proven themselves better than others. The recipe is simple: you need to mix one ingredient with another in equal proportions and place it in bowls in problem areas in the country house or apartment.
- Honey and yeast are mixed using a special technology to prepare a remedy for ants. The pressed product is first crushed and dissolved in cold water or, better, in milk, and only then added to honey, mixing thoroughly.
It is recommended to use honey bait in the house, since in a summer cottage it can attract other insects (bees, wasps, flies, bumblebees).
- Yeast and boric acid help fight large ant colonies. The mixture is prepared from equal proportions of the components. You can add any other ingredients from the recipes listed above to it. Boric acid causes paralysis of the insect, as a result of which it dies. It is not recommended to increase the dosage of boric acid to enhance the effect. In this case, the infected individual will face instant death, and it is necessary to ensure that its relatives are infected.
Attention! Products containing boric acid should be used with caution. It is better to place bowls of poison where children or pets will definitely not reach.
If there are too many insect nests on the site, and their families are large, the following advice will help. As a complement to sweet baits, dry crushed yeast should be sprinkled directly onto anthills and along the paths of insects. This will increase the chance that particles of yeast products will fall into the deep chambers of the ants' lair, contaminating their supplies.
Reviews
I didn’t want to poison my house with insecticides, so I decided to try the folk method of fighting ants. The choice fell on yeast because of its cheapness and safety. I don’t know whether the ants left or died out, but the result was positive - after a month there were no ants in my house. I prefer to attribute the rare corpses of insects to the fact that famine broke out in the anthill.
Mark, Moscow
I'm tired of the ants! They were everywhere, eating my food and even crawling on me sometimes. I didn’t want to spend money on expensive products, so I decided to try yeast. A good folk remedy, I tell you. Half the colony died out, the other half left. Everything took three weeks. Yeast does not provide prevention; I caught several insects two months after treating the apartment. Repeated use of the product helped. I recommend!
Inna, Totma
At the dacha, the ants did not leave, although they carried probably kilograms of yeast home. But everything was fine in the apartment - within a month the colony died out. There were a lot of corpses. I don’t know how yeast acts on their body, but for people this remedy is definitely harmless.
Dmitry, Volgograd
Garlic for ants
Ants do not like anything that has a strong smell, so garlic is often used against them.
You will need 1 liter of warm water and 1 head of aromatic garlic. The garlic cloves are crushed or ground well, then infused in warm water for several hours. You need to water the anthill with the prepared solution. Repeat this for several days. The ants will leave this place.
Not only garlic is used against ants, but also strong-smelling plants, such as wormwood, celandine, black elderberry, and citrus peels. The existing plant component is poured with boiling water, infused and poured into the anthills.
Some gardeners rub garlic and its feathers on tree trunks where ants or aphids crawl. For insects, such an odorous area becomes an insurmountable barrier.
Chemicals
Now on the market there is a wide selection of drugs with a chemical composition that make it possible to quickly get rid of house ants. There is no need to immediately give up if the use of folk remedies is unsuccessful.
Let's look at the most popular and effective chemical options below:
Gel bait is a product that does not require searching for a nest; the working individuals themselves will carry the poison inside the ant’s home:
- Fas;
- Global;
- Shturpm;
- Raptor.
Aerosol is a product in the form of a spray, can be used only if a nest of parasites is found, the entire colony is supposed to be treated:
- Fumitox;
- Get;
- Raid;
- Battalion commander
Pencil - used as a means for processing baseboards, door openings, tiles; principle of action – repelling and poisoning insects:
- Clean house;
- Mashenka.
Trap-bait - drugs that attract worker soldiers, who, receiving a poisonous agent under the cover of food, are carried inside the anthill:
- Grom-2;
- Raptor;
- Battalion commander
Other methods
- A folk remedy – meat bait – gives a good effect. The minced meat is mixed with borax and placed where there are a lot of insects.
- You can try the following method in an apartment. Yeast is diluted in warm water and sugar is added. Next, the prepared mixture is poured into containers placed in places where parasites accumulate.
- Medicinal chamomile is a good remedy for house ants. You can find it at the pharmacy. Parasites simply cannot tolerate it and will move away. You can scatter dry chamomile on any area - on the sofa, near food, on things. The product is safe.
- In the apartment you can put glasses filled with water with the addition of honey and sugar. The insects will try to drink the sweets, but will drown in the water.
- Garlic works great against house ants. Insects cannot stand its smell.
There are many effective ways to combat house ants.
Millet from ants
In one of the videos I heard about this method against ants: millet. However, the owner of the garden complained that the method did not help her. She sprinkled the ground where the ants nested with millet. But the insects didn’t care about the grains. I became interested in this method, and I started looking on the Internet to see if millet is really used to get rid of ants?
On the Internet, bloggers share their experience that the method works. But!!! Millet needs to be sprinkled a lot, thickly and repeatedly. So, one summer resident poured out 1.5 kg of millet in 3 times. It worked. There are no more ants!
There are several versions of why millet helps against ants in a summer cottage:
- The grains fill up the passages in the anthill.
- The ants take them for false eggs, drag them into the anthill, and “kill” them for real ones.
- Millet swells in the anthill and prevents the ants from living.
- The queen dies from millet.
- Millet scattered on the ground attracts birds, which happily feast on ants.
We suggest you read: Remedy for ants in the garden
Well, millet is inexpensive, you can try it.
How to get rid of ants at home
If for some the phrase “ants at home” sounds exotic, for others it is a pressing problem. Of course, the apartment is not inhabited by the same ants that can be found in the forest or in the country, but by another variety of them - house ants.
House ants are synanthropic insect pests that prefer to settle near or directly in human homes.
They usually appear in the kitchen, where there is a lot of available food; insects prefer sweets. You can find ants in a sugar bowl, candy or other sweets that have public access, as well as next to the trash can.
Precisely because ants can eat food from the table and waste from the trash can with equal pleasure, their presence in the house is dangerous for humans. The infections that ants can spread are not limited to mild gastrointestinal upsets and allergic reactions.
Fighting ants at home is no easier than in a garden or greenhouse. Prudent insects build several nests in an apartment at once, placing them at a distance from each other. The main nest is usually very carefully hidden from prying eyes. How to get rid of ants in the house, what methods and pest control products can be used?
Removing ants from fruit trees
Ants not only move from tree to tree themselves, but also carry aphids with them
It is important to make sure that they cannot climb the branches. For this purpose, various protective rings and catching belts are used.
In essence, this is a simple mechanical trap for the entire season. - Make hard funnels from plastic bottles, thick paper or coarse fleecy fabric at a height of 30-50 cm from the ground. A piece of thick rubber, padding polyester or even glass wool will do; - Coat the tree trunks with an adhesive resinous solution. It is prepared from pine resin, rosin and petroleum jelly in a ratio of 50:6:7.5. This all needs to be mixed and boiled until a homogeneous, non-hardening mass is obtained; - Place rags, well soaked in kerosene, under each fruit tree; - Take unnecessary thick fabric, rags or old pieces of wool, soak them in carbolic acid and wrap the tree trunks; - Scatter baits of flour, sugar and boric acid. They are destructive to all pests, and the remains will become an additional boron fertilizer for the soil.
Ants in the country - how to get rid of them in the house
Sometimes ants move into the house and begin to destroy food supplies in the home. To combat them, you can use the following methods:
- Place bait consisting of 50 ml of water, 5-6 g of borax (tetraboric acid salt) and 50 g of sugar in places where ants accumulate;
- Those with a sweet tooth love jam – especially raspberry, cherry and strawberry. Add 20 g of fresh yeast and 5 g of boric acid to 500 g of jam. The ants will happily pounce on the delicacy, but it will most likely be their last - most of the individuals will die within 2 days;
- Since chemicals cannot be used in the apartment, you need to use products that are safe for humans, but unpleasant for insects. For example, such as sunflower oil, elderberry, tomatoes, wild mint, cloves, wormwood and garlic;
- take a piece of old yellowed lard (100-200 g) and fry it on all sides. Leave the lard on a plate near the ant passages. Believe me, rarely is any product capable of repelling small pests so strongly;
- Boric acid against ants has been proving its effectiveness for several years now. It paralyzes the nervous system of insects and they soon die. It is enough to soak several pieces of sugar in boric acid and leave them in this form in an open place. Or you can use 2-3 tsp. dry minced meat and soak them with 1 tsp. boric acid.
Useful articles from the “Diseases and Pests” section:
Useful articles for gardeners:
- Romanesco
- Planting petunia for seedlings and in a greenhouse in 2021: sowing dates
- Actinidia: planting, growing, care, harvesting, diseases and pests
- Irises: when to plant, varieties, cultivation and care in open ground
- Caring for basil at home
- Favorable days for planting pumpkins in 2021
- Fertilizing strawberries in spring for a large harvest: when and what to fertilize
- Gardener, florist and gardener calendar for June 2021: favorable days
- Favorable days for planting cabbage in May 2021
- Gardener, florist and gardener calendar for May 2020
