Finding a trail of ants marching across your kitchen counter is a frustrating experience for any homeowner. Whether they are tiny sugar ants or the more destructive carpenter ants, an ant infestation can compromise your food hygiene and, in some cases, your property’s structure. If you are searching for how to get rid of ants, you aren’t alone—ants are among the most common household pests in the UK.
In this comprehensive guide, we will explore the different types of ants, understand what do ants eat, and provide professional solutions on how to get rid of ants in the house for good.
Identification: Types of Ants and Their Behavior
Before you can decide what kills ants most effectively, you need to know which species has invaded your home. Not all ants are the same, and their habits dictate the treatment required.
Common Types of Ants
- Sugar Ants: A general term for small ants attracted to sweets. Learning how to get rid of sugar ants usually involves deep cleaning and removing food sources.
- Pharaoh Ants: These are tiny, yellow or light brown ants. Pharaoh ants are notorious for “budding,” where the colony splits if they feel threatened by DIY sprays, making them very difficult to eradicate without professional help.
- Carpenter Ants: These are much larger. If you need to know how to get rid of carpenter ants, you must act fast. Unlike other ants, they tunnel into wood to build nests, which can cause structural damage similar to termites.
- Red Ants: Known for their painful stings, red ants (or fire ants) are more common in gardens but can migrate indoors in search of moisture.
Termites vs Ants
Many people confuse these two. In the battle of termites vs ants, remember that ants have “pinched” waists and elbowed antennae, while termites have thick waists and straight antennae. If you suspect the latter, you should read our guide on how to get rid of termites immediately.
How Long Do Ants Live?
To solve an infestation, you have to realize that the ants you see are only the “scouts.”
How long do ants live? A worker ant can live for a few months, but a queen ant can live for several years, producing thousands of offspring. This is why killing the ants you see on the counter never works; you must eliminate the queen. Furthermore, knowing what do ants eat—which ranges from nectar and seeds to grease and other insects—helps you identify the attractants in your home.
How to Get Rid of Ants in the House: Step-by-Step
If you want to know how to get rid of ants effectively, follow this multi-stage approach.
1. Identify the Entry Points
Ants are tiny and can enter through the smallest cracks. Look for gaps around windows, doors, and utility pipes. Sealing these is the first step in household ways to get rid of ants.
2. Eliminate Food Sources
Since ants are foragers, they are always looking for their next meal. Keep all food in airtight containers and never leave dirty dishes in the sink overnight. For more general advice on maintaining a pest-free home, check out our guide on common household insects and how to get rid of them.
3. Use Targeted Baits
When people ask what kills ants, they often reach for a spray. However, baits are much better. Ants take the poisoned bait back to the nest, sharing it with the queen. This is the only way to ensure the entire colony is destroyed.
How to Get Rid of Carpenter Ants
Learning how to get rid of carpenter ants requires a more aggressive strategy. Because they nest inside wood, surface sprays won’t reach them.
- Find the Nest: Look for “frass” (sawdust-like debris) near wooden structures.
- Check for Moisture: These ants love damp wood. Fix leaky pipes or blocked gutters immediately.
- Professional Treatment: Often, the nest is deep inside a wall or crawlspace, requiring professional foaming agents to eradicate.
Household Ways to Get Rid of Ants (DIY Tips)
If you have a minor issue with “smarty ants” (a colloquial term for clever foragers) or common garden ants, you can try these:
- Vinegar Solution: Mix 50/50 vinegar and water to wipe down counters. It disrupts their pheromone trails so they can’t find their way back.
- Soapy Water: A spray bottle with dish soap and water can kill ants on contact by breaking down their exoskeletons.
- Borax Baits: Mixing borax with sugar and water is a classic DIY method, but be careful around pets and children.
While these work for small numbers, larger infestations or complex species like pharaoh ants usually require professional ant control services to ensure the problem doesn’t return.
Conclusion: Reclaim Your Kitchen
Knowing how to get rid of ants is about more than just a quick spray; it’s about understanding their biology and removing their reason for being in your home. From sealing entry points to choosing the right baits for how to get rid of sugar ants, a methodical approach is key.
If you’ve tried household ways to get rid of ants and the trail keeps coming back, it’s time to call in the experts. Whether you are dealing with red ants in the garden or a complex infestation of pharaoh ants in your walls, we can help. For more information on keeping your home pest-free, visit our services page for a full list of solutions.
Without food, a worker ant will typically die within a few days to a week. However, the colony often has stored food, and the queen can survive much longer. This is why removing crumbs is helpful but rarely kills an established colony on its own.
Ants are highly attracted to high-protein and high-sugar foods. This includes spilled fruit juice, honey, crumbs, and even pet food. How to get rid of sugar ants specifically starts with ensuring all sugary substances are cleaned with a disinfectant.
The main difference is their impact on your home. Ants generally just eat your food, whereas termites eat your house. Carpenter ants are the middle ground—they don't eat the wood for food, but they hollow it out to live in, which still weakens your home's structure.
It’s difficult because ants leave pheromone trails (chemical paths) that tell other ants where the food is. Even if you kill the current trail, new ants from the same colony—or even a different colony—will follow that invisible chemical path later.
Peppermint oil and cinnamon are popular natural deterrents. They don't necessarily kill the ants, but the strong scents overwhelm their senses and prevent them from following trails. For a more permanent natural solution, diatomaceous earth can be sprinkled in cracks to dehydrate and kill them.
No, and you should avoid doing so. Pharaoh ants react to toxic sprays by "splitting" their colony into several smaller ones. This makes the infestation spread to multiple rooms in your house, making the final eradication much more expensive and difficult.