Ants that you see inside are foragers following scent trails to a food source. To get rid of ants, you have to get rid of the colony.
Seeing ants on your counter is obnoxious. It’s more obnoxious to wipe down counters and take down a few only to see them come back again. The problem with ants is that they live in colonies and the ants have many more reinforcements behind them.
Ant colonies run on expendable labor. The workers marching across your counter are foragers, a small fraction of a colony that lives in a wall void, under a slab, and in mulch against the foundation. Taking them down barely affects the colony. If you treat these workers, it feels like productive action and does very little. The trail will remain and more foragers will be back the next day. Wiping the trail down with soapy water or vinegar can help break it down.
Worse still, odorous house ants, which are the small, sweet-loving, faintly rotten-smelling kind behind most Midwest kitchen invasions, run colonies with many queens. Repellent sprays panic them into budding, meaning the colonies split. One nest becomes three. So often the homeowners who spray hardest end up with the most ants, which is about as unfair as pest control gets.
Baits work better. They are carried back to the colony where they reach the queen. When the bait takes, that’s enough to collapse the entire colony. Once you have reason to believe the bait has been taken, then you can wipe down trails and clean up food sources. Ants like crumbs, grease, pet food, and sugar and honey so you will want to make sure all of these are gone or inaccessible to them. You can also seal entries by caulking gaps around windows, doors, and utility line penetrations. If you have mulch or vegetation near the foundation, pull them back.
If you are tired of seeing ants in your kitchen, Mosquito Squad of Omaha Metro can help. Mosquito Squad's home and yard coverage works the colonies and entry routes, helping protect your kitchen from the next shift of foragers.
