Destruction of red ants in the apartment. How can you get rid of red ants in your apartment? Chemical weapon against insects

Red ants again and again encroach on the habitats of people, driving them to a frenzy. It is necessary to start a military campaign against annoying insects as soon as traces of their presence in an apartment, house or on a personal plot become noticeable.

Meet the enemy

Fire-colored forest and domestic ants are called red. The latter are much smaller - the body length is about 3 mm. They have three transverse stripes on the back of the body.

Three transverse stripes on the back - a distinctive feature of the domestic variety of ginger ants

These ants also differ in origin: forest ants inhabit the forests of Russia, while domestic ants were brought from India in the 16th century. Now red house ants inhabit almost the entire globe (no wonder there are about 10 thousand species!), Except for Antarctica, Greenland and Iceland. From which we can conclude that insects need warmth for a comfortable stay.

Red ants are called pharaohs. This name was given by the Swedish natural scientist Karl Linnaeus, mistakenly believing that the birthplace of insects is Egypt. He was misled by the fact that they were discovered during excavation of tombs.

Lifestyle features

Red ants are social insects. They live in large colonies, the number of which can be up to tens of thousands of individuals. All inhabitants are clearly subordinated to the hierarchy of three castes: females, males and workers. Representatives of the latter are the most numerous; they get food for the elite.

The female red ant is larger than the workers and has a more massive hindquarters.

From such a social division, we can conclude: having destroyed a couple of dozen ants that encroached on crumbs in the kitchen, we will not get rid of insects. The female needs only five days to restore the population size.

Having found and destroyed a couple of dozen individuals, you should not count on successful disposal of pests

What red ants eat

They love to eat well and do not differ in choice of food. They are attracted by:

• food products (therefore, insects are also called meat or sugar);
• leftovers of food from a trash can not taken out in time;
• pests, the extermination of which has a beneficial effect on human life - aphids, fleas, moths and other insects.

Man provides a complete diet of ants

The reasons for the appearance in the human habitat

A man owes his uncleanliness to the invasion of red ants - food debris accumulating in the bin, crumbs on the floor and on the table, dust. But they are not only deployed in the kitchen. Wardrobes, children's toys, bookshelves - if conditions are favorable for themselves, pests will be everywhere. And in multi-storey buildings, ants can place a nest in ceilings between concrete structures, under tiles on the floor, in ventilation ducts and other secluded and hard-to-reach corners.

If you notice a couple of ants in the kitchen, this does not mean that a colony has settled in the house. First, scouts get into it, who find out if the dwelling is suitable for habitation. Therefore, start the fight against insects immediately.

Ants live not only in the kitchen, but in other rooms.

How insects enter the house

Red ants have several paths to human habitation:

If you accidentally brought red forest ants into the house, there is nothing to fear: they do not live with a person, so they will very quickly leave the room or die.

How pests appear on a personal plot

For gardeners, the invasion of red ants is also unpleasant. The land plot and plantings on it suffer not so much because insects feed on grown fruits, but because of the creation of nests in the root systems of plants and trees. A strong ant colony is capable of ditching a mature tree in just 2-3 years. If the nest appears in the ground, then nothing will grow around this place.

Why are red ants dangerous?

In addition to the described examples of harm caused by the pharaohs, there are other consequences of man's proximity to insects:

Unlike their forest counterparts, domestic ants, due to their modest size, do not have strong mandibles (jaws) that can expand to such a size as to capture a piece of skin. But there are cases when they bite newborn children, causing itching, pain and allergic reactions.

Ants can bite small children, causing allergic reactions and itching

How to get rid of ants in a house or apartment

The fastest and most effective way to get rid of insects is to call a team of exterminators who will find out the location of the nests and leave no chance for females and males to survive, not just working individuals. At the same time, the owners of the house will be given a guarantee for a certain period that there will be no re-invasion. If for some reason you prefer to fight the ants on your own, then there are two approaches:

• using chemicals;
• folk ways.

Professional pest controllers ensure that the ants will not return to the house for a long time.

Chemical weapon against insects

This type of product can be divided into four categories: aerosols, gels, traps, and powders. Before taking on the destruction of insects, you must:

• remove people and animals from the premises;
• protect food and dishes from the ingress of chemicals, for example, cover with cellophane;
• wear a mask or respirator, gloves.

Usually, manufacturers of insect control products offer products in different forms of release: traps, aerosols, gels

You can try to get rid of insects using a special ultrasonic device. However, its effectiveness against ants has not been proven, since the coverage area of ​​the device is not too large.

Table: effective chemicals against red ants

Video: how to get rid of red ants by professional means (advice from Elena Malysheva)

Folk remedies

If the location of the nests is found, vacuum them or fill them with boiling water. This is the most productive way to get rid of the spread of domestic ants. If individuals have just appeared in the dwelling, use one of three methods of persecution:

If ants are firmly settled in an apartment or house, act more decisively.

1. The most affordable and proven way to get rid of unwanted neighbors is to use it: mix it with sugar in arbitrary proportions, add water to get a mass from which you can form balls. Lay them out on pieces of paper along the ant paths. Sugar can be replaced with minced meat or jam.
2. Mix the borax with granulated sugar and sprinkle on the pest sites. Boric acid and borax methods are dangerous for children and pets.

   To prepare the poison, use dry borax

3. Use yeast. They swell in the stomach of the ants and the insects die. Mix them with sugar and water, roll them into balls and place them on paper backings in the places the ants like.

   To prepare the poison, it is convenient to use pressed yeast sticks

4. Enhance the action of the described methods with talcum-based baby powder, as well as corn or oatmeal: scatter it along the ant paths. Disoriented workers will not carry supplies to the nest, males and females will be left without food.
5. Spread the coffee grounds on the ant trails. The method will reduce the population size, but will not get rid of insects.

   Coffee grounds will help reduce the number of ants

Video: 3 ways to get rid of ants in the house

Prophylaxis

In order not to face the problem of red ants in the house or to prevent their reappearance, follow these simple rules:

• do not leave food in an open container;
• wash the dishes after each meal;
• throw out the trash every day;
• keep your home clean;
• fill up the cracks in the walls and floor;
• do not keep rotting wood in the house.

The main principle of ant control is cleanliness in the house, especially in the kitchen.

We drive ants out of the garden and vegetable garden

Open space gives you more options for working on the site. The main goal is to destroy the female. To do this, you need to find a nest of red ants, then dig up this place and fill it with a strong solution of lime. It remains to get rid of the workers.

It is necessary to poison ants simultaneously with aphids, otherwise getting rid of some insects will lead to an increase in the population of others.

The main task is to find and destroy the anthill

Insecticide use

Effective preparations for controlling insects in personal plots are based on diazinon (for example, Muratox). The ingress of a substance into the insect's body provokes paralysis and damage to the nervous system. And the intestinal contact formula allows you to guarantee that in 2-3 days after the treatment, the entire colony will die and the territory on 21 days will definitely not be attractive to new red-haired visitors. You can also use the insecticide in its pure form: 10 ml is enough to process 50 square meters.

Video: how to defeat garden ants on the site

Folk ways

As well as for fighting ants in houses, in kitchen gardens and gardens, sharp odors unpleasant for insects are used - parsley, tansy, laurel, mustard, tomato. Spread out the stems or leaves of the plants near the ant paths, around the trees. And plant mint and valerian along the beds to scare off annoying pests. The following remedies are also effective:

1. Mix boric acid and sugar in a 1: 4 ratio, fill the paths and heaps with this composition.

   Boric acid eliminates many insects, including ants

2. The safest option for plantings to get rid of red invaders is to use oregano and sulfur powder in a 1: 2 ratio. Mix the ingredients, cover the piles with the mixture. To enhance the effect, dig up the entire area with this composition. It is also good insect prevention.
3. The smell of kerosene also repels insects. However, this method cannot guarantee the result 100%. Dilute 10 tbsp. l. substances in 10 liters of water and fill in the places where insects are found.

   The smell of kerosene will scare ants away from the ground, but for a short time.

4. More often than others, raspberries suffer from insects. Especially for this bush, a method was invented with sheepskin and carbolic acid (sold in pharmacies), the smell of which will scare away not only ants, but also aphids from raspberries. Cut strips 4–5 cm wide from the sheepskin, saturate with the product. Wrap the wool outward on the raspberries 15 cm above the ground.
5. If an anthill is found, set it on fire by flooding it with carbon sulphide (sold in pharmacies or household chemicals stores). When using the method, remember that beneficial insects will die along with the pests.
6. Use strong smells. Top the pile with grated onion or garlic.

   The garlic smell scares off ants, but you will have to grind more than a dozen slices

7. Prepare solutions from tomato or yeast tops (1 tablespoon per glass of cold water) and spread around the nest.
8. Make a trap: pour a mixture of honey and water or sugar syrup into small jars, add borax and leave the bait. Change it periodically. In terms of efficiency, the method is at the lowest levels of the rating, since it allows you to get rid of only dozens of individuals.

   Borax will turn syrup to poison

Video: how to get rid of ants in a greenhouse

Preventive measures

To prevent ants from settling on the site, do the following:

If red ants appear in the house, do not hesitate. You need to act right away, because they multiply at a tremendous speed, and in a week they will be walking around the apartment in hundreds. How to get rid of red ants in an apartment, what these pests are and where they come from - we will consider in the article.

Ginger ants - what kind of insects?

Small red ants are much different from the black ants that live on the street. They are very fond of settling next to a person in order to feed on his products and waste. Such pests can also fly, so their offspring can travel great distances without much difficulty.

Domestic yellow or red ants are often called "pharaohs", because earlier scientists believed that their homeland was Egypt. But modern researchers have established that the place of origin of the pests is India, from where they were brought in by merchant ships. At first, ants began to attack the homes of Europeans, but by the middle of the 20th century they had already bred all over the world, except for the permafrost regions.

Note: Red ants are similar to common ants, but are smaller and yellowish brown in color. They love to live in floor crevices and under skirting boards, in clothes, and hide in stairwells.

Where do pests come from?

Insects, like other species of ants, lead a social life - they form large colonies with a clear division of responsibilities. Such colonies can number thousands or even millions of individuals. The colony has a queen bee responsible for laying eggs, worker ants, guards. But where does such a "family" come from in a person's apartment or house?

Red ants are constantly looking for food for the uterus and for themselves, therefore they are able to move very long distances. They can live close to human habitation, consuming leftover food from garbage chutes and dumpsters, as well as catching other insects. It is not difficult for them to enter a person's apartment if something attracted them there.

If there are bread crumbs on the floor, tables are not cleaned, there is a pile of dishes in the sink, food is stored just about anywhere - you can wait for uninvited guests. Seeing that there is enough food, they will certainly settle in the house, multiplying rapidly and forming a new colony.

Interesting: A small proportion of scout ants can regularly visit people's apartments, especially if they are on the lower floors. By giving signals to congeners, insects are able to call them to where "they feed well and tasty."

Are there other reasons why red ants appear in the apartment? Yes, they can be as follows:

1. A person himself brings pests in bags and bags from clinics, hotels, any other place where they live.
2. Ants enter the apartment through ventilation or front doors from neighbors.
3. Insects are carried into the house by guests in the pockets of their clothes, where they hide.

Why are ants dangerous to humans?

Measures on how to get rid of all red ants in the apartment and prevent them from appearing anymore are very important. The harm from insects is as follows:

• Discomfort - physical and psychological
• Food spoilage
• Transfer of microbes and viruses that cause various diseases
• Damage to household appliances, electrical wiring
• Sometimes - human bites and provoking allergic reactions

Fighting ants is not easy, they are incredibly tenacious. Only workers crawl around the apartment, feeding the entire colony. If you kill them, the "heart" of the nest will remain intact, in a couple of days the colony will be replenished with new individuals. The queen ant is usually resistant to many types of insecticides and produces many eggs on a regular basis. If the ants sense danger, they hide elsewhere, which makes them even more protected. All these reasons mean the following: prepare for the war on pests must be serious.

You can get rid of domestic ants only with an integrated approach to solving the problem. It is necessary to act in the following directions:

• Preventing pests from entering your home
• Destruction of a colony that has already settled in the house

You need to start by closing all the holes in the floor and crevices in which they can organize a home anthill. At the same time, they should be completely deprived of their food - do not allow dirty dishes to stand, crumbs and food debris on the floor. Rubbish should be taken out regularly, and food waste should not be thrown into the bucket. In general, the apartment should be kept in order, and all products, even loose ones, should be stored in the refrigerator, on the balcony or tightly closed.

Important: Keeping your apartment perfectly clean for at least a week is a surefire way to get rid of ants in your kitchen. In the absence of power, they are more likely to leave the premises.

Ways to bait domestic ants

Often there is no time or energy left to wait for the pests to leave the premises voluntarily. In addition, when there is a pet in the house, the use of its food is enough for the pests, and it is not possible to completely remove them by maintaining cleanliness. In this case, you will have to apply one of the following types of pest control:

1. Aerosol insecticides.
2. Gels.
3. Powders.
4. Pencils.
5. Sticky traps.
6. Ultrasonic scarers.
7. Folk remedies.

It is usually recommended to poison insects using two or three types of products at the same time, because each of them has its pros and cons. So, aerosols rarely cover the uterus with their action, but they quickly destroy working individuals. Pencils and crayons scare away and kill those who go for food, therefore harm the entire colony. The uterus can be destroyed by contact insecticides brought to it by workers. Traditional methods will scare off all individuals with an unpleasant smell and taste.

Ant chemicals

The best way to get rid of the entire colony permanently is to find the queen and destroy it. The queen of ants never leaves the nest, and is not able to look for food for herself. But it is not easy to destroy the female, because her location is always hidden from prying eyes. Therefore, it is necessary to infect the worker ants so that they poison the female and the larvae with poison.

The use of pesticides is the best remedy for red ants. They are sold in any supermarket, hardware store, pest control department. The most popular drugs are:

1. Aerosols - "Raid", "Raptor".
2. Traps - "Combat", "Thunder", "Raptor".
3. Gels "Global", "Dokhloks".
4. Crayons and pencils - "Mashenka", "Clean House".

Before using sprays and aerosols, it is imperative to remove people and pets from the room, because insecticides are harmful to humans. During spraying, the respiratory tract should be protected by a gauze mask or respirator, gloves should be worn on the hands. Usually ants die immediately after being poisoned, because in this respect they are much weaker than larger pests. Nevertheless, surviving insects develop tolerance to some insecticides, and then the drug does not act on them.

Applying gels to surfaces is considered to be a more effective method for removing ginger ants. The insecticide of gels acts a few hours after contact with it, by which time the worker ants will have time to bring the poison to the uterus. The remaining workers can be etched with a spray, especially since the new larvae in the apartment will no longer reproduce.

Crayons and pencils work the same way as gels. They are used to lubricate areas where insects most often run. After contact with the poison, they will infect the rest of the relatives in the colony. Boric acid is also often used against pests, which corrodes the chitinous cover of the pest after contact after a couple of hours. In order for insects to happily approach boric acid powder, it is combined with sugar.

Attention: If the fight against ants does not end with success, you can invite specialists from the SES or a pest control company. They destroy pests in one go - quickly and reliably.

Ultrasonic ant repellents are portable devices that emit a sound that humans cannot detect. Such sounds are unpleasant for ants, but devices must be used regularly and for a long time to achieve the desired effect.

Tips to get rid of ginger ants quickly:

Folk measures to combat red ants

The people consider it very effective to create barriers from harmful insects. This is a continuous line 1-1.5 cm wide, which will not allow them to penetrate to food, as a result, the ants will leave their home. To organize such barriers, you can apply:

• Powdered activated carbon
• Cinnamon
• Turmeric
• Baby powder
• Petrolatum
• Ground black or red pepper
• Garlic powder
• Crushed mint or bay leaf
• Cloves
• Orange peel

All of these products can be decomposed in boxes where cereals, sugar, flour are stored. The essential oils of citrus, lavender, and cloves also scare off red ants. It is effective to wash floors with vinegar added to the water. Other recipes from the people from red pests:

1. Grind chamomile flowers into powder, sprinkle them on insect habitats.
2. Sprinkle baseboards and crevices with baking soda.
3. Treat all favorite areas of the appearance of ants with water and ammonia.
4. Add yeast to a glass of water until a viscous mass is obtained, add a tablespoon of sugar. Put on the ant bait. They die from yeast.
5. Pour semolina for insects - after eating it will swell in the stomach and kill them.
6. Combine minced meat with boric acid powder, arrange the balls near the walls in the kitchen. Instead of minced meat, you can use dough, boiled potatoes, raw yolk.

Ant prevention is not difficult. It is important to keep the kitchen clean and not to neglect the rules of food storage. The trash bin must have a tight lid, and the dishes simply must be washed on time. This will prevent the reproduction of pests, because the room will not be suitable for them.

Pharaoh ants came to us on merchant ships from warm countries. They cannot live in the cold, but in apartments the living conditions for these insects are ideal. Pests eat leftover food and build nests between walls, and their small size allows them to move freely throughout the apartment building. Many do not know how to get rid of red ants in an apartment and use ineffective methods.

Fundamental rules

Only 10 percent of the entire colony catches the eye. These are working individuals who conduct exploration and search for food for the rest of the family. The ant family will not suffer if you kill only them. The Queen will quickly give birth to new offspring with foragers and scouts.

On a note!

To get rid of pests, you need to find a nest of ants in an apartment and kill it (you can understand how it looks from the photo). Or poisonous baits should be used, which the foragers themselves will carry to the queen.

Ant control is difficult for the following reasons:

1. They, and their nests are hidden in the walls and under the baseboard.
2. Insects adapt to some poisons and stop responding to them.
3. If you choose a strong poisonous substance, then the worker ant will not have time to bring it to the anthill.
4. Not all chemicals can be used indoors.

The whole house should fight red ants. If the treatment is carried out in only one apartment, then the pests will continue to multiply and run from one neighbor to another. You can use insecticides and.

Chemistry from ants in the apartment

1. Half a glass of jam is mixed with a tablespoon of boric acid. Poisonous food is spread on cardboard boxes or flat saucers.
2. Boric acid and borax are mixed in equal proportions. Sugar syrup or honey is added to the mixture. The bait is laid out on ant paths.

A yeast bait is a good one. The fresh product is mixed with syrup or honey and left on the routes of the red ants. swell in the stomach of the insect and cause its death. The pests eat part of the bait on the spot, and part of the bait is taken to the nest.

On a note!

People use aromatic herbs and spices against small red ants in the apartment. the smell of cinnamon, red pepper, garlic, wormwood and chamomile.

Homemade mixes do not have a quick effect. The first results are expected for several days. Ants completely disappear only after 2-3 weeks.

It is worth starting to fight red ants in the apartment as soon as they start up. If you do not take action, the arthropods will quickly breed and you will not be able to cope with them on your own.

Ants are social creatures that live in large colonies. Some of them have several million individuals. Each colony has a queen, whose duties include laying eggs, and worker ants, who are tasked with taking care of obtaining food for the female and her larvae. Often, these insects have to travel great distances in search of water and food for the queen. When they reach the goal and find a source of food, they leave behind a trail in the form of a certain smell so that other individuals can also get to this place. That is why you can often observe a whole "caravan" of ants. At the same time, insects do not always build their nests on the street. Some colonies settle in human dwellings. And this is quite difficult to deal with. This article will discuss how to get ants out of an apartment.

Fighting ants

Getting rid of the little red-haired invaders is quite difficult, but possible. It is important to take into account some of their vital characteristics when fighting ants. So, the heart of the colony of these insects is the nest, in which the female lives, producing new individuals. She never leaves her shelter and is unable to find food on her own. The female is fed by workers who are unable to produce offspring. If red ants have settled in an apartment, then finding their nest is quite difficult. Most often, it is hidden in a cavity of a small floor or wall. You can spot an ant hole if you're lucky. But do not immediately remove the parquet or chip off the tile. The ant corridor that leads to the nest can be very long. Then you will have to spoil more than one parquet board or tile. But we know that worker ants provide food for the entire colony. Therefore, through them, you can try to transfer the poisoned treat to the female and her offspring.

Poisonous "goodie" for ants

The ant potion must have a poison concentration of no more than 2%. Boric acid is most effective. It has the ability to eat away chitin, from which the bodies of ants are formed. But insects in this case do not die right away, they manage to carry the poison to the colony's nest.

Remedies for ants in an apartment with boric acid

There are some simple and effective recipes for making ant-killing food. With their help, you can drive insects out of the apartment. Some methods of preparation are given below.

Method number 1

Method number 3

You can prepare a bait consisting of two tablespoons (tablespoons) of minced meat and 20 grams of boric acid. Mix the components thoroughly. Then, from the resulting mass, small balls should be rolled and laid out in places where ants appear.

Identifying scout ants and preventing massive insect attacks

At the first signs that the first small ants have started up in the apartment, you need to prevent their massive invasion. At first, these can be "scouts" who identify the presence of food supplies, and then report them to the rest of the colony. So there is no time to waste. You need to start cleaning right away. Products should be packed in sealed containers or bags. Remains of meat, sweet, fatty foods should be wiped off the tables. Do not leave dirty dishes after cooking and eating. It is recommended to regularly wipe the countertops, drawers and shelves with a vinegar solution. Thanks to it, the surfaces will not only become cleaned and disinfected, but also acquire a smell that is unbearable for ants. Garbage should be taken out as often as possible, and the bucket should be kept tightly closed.

How to ward off ants with cleanliness and order in an apartment

When small ants are found in the apartment, you should rinse all cans, bottles and food containers, on the surface of which there is at least a trace of sticky or greasy foods. Particular attention should be paid to containers for jam and preserves. Bottles with sauces, jars of pickles, bottles with medicinal syrups located outside the refrigerator should not have any smudges. Foods that are most attractive to ants, such as containers of honey, can be placed in a bowl of water. Crawling into it, insects will drown.

You can also scare off ants with the help of sunflower oil, mint, elderberry leaves, wormwood, garlic, the smell of which is unbearable for them.

All of the above actions should be carried out daily throughout the week. Not finding food sources in your home, the ants will go in search of them elsewhere. They will not leave a trace on which other individuals of the colony can follow.

Yeast against ants

Not sure how to get the ants out of your apartment? Dry baker's yeast can help with this. They will need one spoon (teaspoon). The yeast is mixed with 100-150 ml of sugar syrup. The resulting product is dotted on the paths of the ants. They will love this treat. But after 10 minutes after consuming the mixture, the yeast fermentation process will begin, as a result of which the insect's abdomen will begin to swell, and it will flee. This procedure should be carried out regularly. You can simply pour the mixture into a small, low container.

Chemicals, ant traps

If you are thinking about how to get ants out of an apartment using chemical products, remember that they are dangerous for children and pets.

The drug "Regent"

It is a powder that comes in a small sachet. Its price is about 10 rubles. Dissolve the product in water and apply the mixture with a syringe (with a needle) into all cracks and holes in the floor and walls. As a result, the ants moving in them will begin to die, which will scare off other individuals.

Trap Raid

A trap made in an industrial setting, specially designed for exterminating insects, can be bought commercially. It contains toxic but attractive granules for ants, which they transfer to the nest of the colony. Thus, a large number of individuals are infected. As a result, the uterus, her offspring, and the worker ants die.

Aerosols: Dichlorvos Raid

A well-known remedy that saves not only from ants, but also from many other species of insects that have settled in a person's home. Dichlorvos should be sprayed onto the paths along which insects move, into cracks and cracks in the floor and tiles, and other potential loopholes where they may be.

Prophylaxis

We figured out how to get the ants out of the apartment. Means for this exist in large quantities, both folk and chemical. But how to make sure that the ants do not visit the apartment at all? To do this, you need to maintain perfect cleanliness in your home. There should be no crumbs or debris in the kitchen. Kitchen tiles on the walls must be washed regularly from a variety of splashes. You need to take out the trash regularly. Cereals and bulk materials should be kept in tightly sealed containers or bags. Food for animals also needs to be controlled - it is in it that the largest concentration of ants can often be found. It is advisable to clean the bowls with their food after each feeding of pets until the next time.

Ants (Latin Formicidae)- a family of social insects from the superfamily of ants (Formicoidea) of the order Hymenoptera. They are among the most widespread insects and are of particular interest with the complex organization of the community. The science of ants is called myrmecology.

We are not interested in the whole genus of ants, but in only three of their species, most often found in the middle zone of Eurasia.

• Red myrmica (Myrmica rubra)- This is a species of small red ants of the genus Myrmica, about 4-5 mm long (uterus up to 6 mm). The body is yellow to reddish brown. Collect small arthropods, both living and dead; aphids are bred as "ant cows", a classic example of trophobiotic symbiosis.

• Ginger forest ant (Formica rufa Linnaeus)- a species of medium-sized ants of the genus Formica from the Formicinae subfamily of the Formicidae family. They are of the greatest importance for the biological protection of forests from pests. Red forest ants are included in the IUCN Red List of Threatened Animals in the international Red List of the World Conservation Union.

• Is a species of the genus Lasius from the subfamily Formicinae, within the family Formicidae, which includes ants of small size and, as a rule, earthen. Workers are about 3 - 5 mm long, the uterus is larger (7 - 10 mm). It feeds on aphids, both living in trees and living on herbaceous plants, on leaves, stems and roots. It feeds on the corpses of insects, but sometimes attacks the living.

Actually, the ants themselves are harmless enough.

Being real social insects and leading an eusocial lifestyle, ants have three castes (females, males, workers), including absolutely wingless workers. In anthills one can always find females - both fertile queens (queens) and sterile workers. True, queens are much more difficult to find. If workers (especially large individuals - soldiers) rush to bite everyone in case of danger, then the queens are very shy and immediately hide much longer and deeper. Males appear only during the breeding season. For most of the year, the ant family consists of one or more fertile females, a large number of workers, and brood (eggs, larvae, pupae).

A family of ants is an association of hundreds, thousands, and sometimes millions of individuals, by whose efforts the nest is built, numerous offspring are fed, the anthill and its feeding area are protected from the encroachments of aggressive neighbors. All these tasks would have remained unfulfilled, and the family itself would have disintegrated, if the ants that made up the family did not coordinate their actions, and their efforts were not subordinated to a common task - the preservation and prosperity of the family.

The function of each worker ant is aimed at ensuring the well-being of the family.... The ant's actions are ultimately determined by social necessity; any type of its activity is of a pronounced social character. It manifests itself everywhere. Forage workers obtain food in quantities that are many times their individual needs. The collection of building material for the construction of a nest in ants is generally pointless when applied to an individual and makes sense only in a community. In the families of many ants, there is a special group of carrier ants that carry larvae, pupae, young workers, and sometimes females from one part of the nest to another or to a related anthill.



Marcus33

In favor of the ants.

In the process of vital activity, ants bring considerable benefit; in places where anthills are built, there is a concentration and accelerated decomposition of plant residues, aeration and improvement of the water regime and soil structure. The soil is enriched with humus and elements important for plants (phosphorus, nitrogen, potassium, magnesium, etc.) in forms accessible to plants. And also do not forget the predatory and collecting activity of ants. Ants that settle in wood or include old stumps in their nests participate in the mechanical destruction of dead wood, thereby accelerating the process of its decomposition. Red forest and thin-headed ants collect wood and herbaceous particles, twigs, needles, scales, blades of grass, etc. from the territory surrounding the nest, concentrating them in anthills, where the decomposition of these particles is much faster than on the soil surface.

Anthills are centers of increased soil fertility... Small nests are micro-foci; large nests are macro-foci that are already perceptible with standard accounting methods.

In the extraction of ants, harmful insects predominate... During mass reproduction, pests in the prey of ants make up 90% or more.

And yet, no matter how useful ants in suburban areas are, they annoy us, breed aphids on our favorite roses and other plants, and dig in paths.

• pour boiling water over the anthill;
• loosen their nest and sprinkle with lime or tobacco dust;
• ants do not tolerate pungent odors; on the anthill, you can put the head of a smoked herring, cut into several pieces of garlic cloves, lay out the tops of the tomato or parsley leaves;
• a decoction of tomato tops helps well; the more concentrated the solution, the better;
• take corrugated cardboard about 20 cm wide, sprinkle it with a solution of soot or dust it with cinnamon. Ants cannot stand the smell of soot and cinnamon;
• not a very pleasant way, but you can water the nests of ants with urine, it often helps;
• make a solution: take ten liters of water, two glasses of vegetable oil, some cheap shampoo and vinegar; poke a hole in the center of the anthill and pour this mixture there; cover with foil for several days;
• bring large red ants from the forest and settle in the garden, and after that the black ants will leave your territory by themselves;

Any of these methods of dealing with these annoying insects have their opponents and supporters, but, unfortunately, they do not give a 100% guarantee of getting rid of ants. Therefore, many gardeners often opt for chemical ants. Gardeners should also be aware that any of the ant control methods are useless if the queen remains in the anthill. The most humane way to get rid of ants is to move the nest outside the property. To do this, you need to take an old bucket and cover the anthill. The ants will quickly begin to form nests in the new container. As soon as this process is completed, it is necessary to cut the nest with a shovel and, together with the queen ant, take it somewhere further from your site. And the remaining individuals themselves will leave after the uterus.

• A.A. Zakharova, Ant, family, colony. Publishing house "Science" Moscow 1978