Top positive review
3 people found this helpful
This is really the best stuff out there, at least for Bay Area argentine ants
By Max on Reviewed in the United States on March 7, 2013
The bay area has these little black ants literally everywhere, working day and night, and after 4-5 years of trying to fight them with the different natural remedies and other strategies, we found this and the search is now over. A bonus is that this bait/trap/poison is made from the same stuff as those natural 'recipes' anyway, but I'm guessing has some more toxic stuff in there but I'm ok with that. When it would rain, we would spend hours and hours plugging up holes in the house where they would come in, wiping up dead/living ants, vaccuming them, etc. But the fact is, there is NO WAY to plug every hole in your house that a 1-2mm ant can get through. Most houses have vented crawlspaces, so they can get in there. Then, almost all houses will have small gaps in the sub floor, and the small gaps between the subfloor and regular flooring (especially by the walls where they meet the drywall), and then small gaps between the drywall, baseboard and flooring. Or in the case of kitchen cabinets, it is unlikely there is baseboard behind them, so there's definitely a gap between the flooring and drywall. Or plumbing penetrations through the floor / walls. Even electrical outlets!! Yes, we saw ants that were crawling up through an hole in a wall bottom plate, on the romex wire, into the electrical outlet box, and through the tiny little gaps around the outlet cover. So...the advice to plug holes is probably a good thing to do for other reasons, but it won't prevent ants from finding a way in. So, how it works is, you take this trap/bait, put it where the ants are, as close as possible to where they enter the house, and they'll almost immediately go in there and start eating the poison. Make sure not to spill the stuff, it is really sticky (there are directions for how to cut the bottom). You won't really notice any improvement for about 24 hours, and then you'll start to see the # of ants dwindle, and 24 hours later there should be about 70% less, and usually for us about 24 hours after that they are completely gone. Now what we've been experimenting with is "pushing out", so once the ants are gone from the house, now I'm putting them on the porch, in the crawlspace, and in the yard areas immediately next to the house. I think if we don't do this, then the next time it rains, the ants that survived (or another nest) will just move in. So I want to 'set up a perimeter' using these things. I tried this, and it just rained like crazy yesterday, and ZERO ants in the house. I know we still have them in other parts of the yard, but that's ok. I mean, ants are an important part of the ecosystem, but just don't want them in the house because they get into everything. This is what we were dealing with: 1 - Ants would go into the dishwasher, probably for the residual water in the bottom and food bits. We run the dishwasher at least 1x per day, so it is not like we were leaving things out. 2 - We came home after being away for 2 weeks and there were thousands of dead ants in the FREEZER! They had crawled into the freezer, I'm not sure after what, and died. That was fun cleaning up. 3 - Generally though, they are just after water, and any obvious / easy food like honey, sugar, etc. They will crawl into a jar of honey, using the screw threads of the glass as a pathway, so now we keep these jars inside bags. I wish they had a subscribe and save for this one :)
Top critical review
3 people found this helpful
Does attract and kill ants, but not a good long-term solution
By M J on Reviewed in the United States on May 18, 2021
These Terro bait stations are filled with boric acid in a suspension of sweet, syrupy liquid. The liquid itself is the bait for sweet-eating ants, and the boric acid gradually dessicates them and any other colony member they distribute it to. It's designed to be slow-acting so that the ants will be more likely to accept the bait (and boy, do they!) and eventually feed it to the queen(s), thereby collapsing the colony. It sounds great on paper, but I've found that this bait will not resolve an excessive ant infestation, nor will it stave off reinfestations. It does kill the ants, of that I'm certain, because a few days after setting up these bait stations near a home entry point, I saw a lot of them carrying around their dead sisters. Of course, the feeding rate by then had seemingly quadrupled, which is (in theory, at least) a very good sign; as the saying goes, it gets much worse before it gets better because it means that many more colony members are picking it up and taking it back to the others in the nest, all of whom will die within a few days. When the feeding dramatically slowed about a week after I started these, I assumed that the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel was in sight and that my ant problems would soon be eradicated. Unfortunately, even after I gave it about another month or two, the feeding rate did not decrease any more and I went through dozens of these baits in the meantime. I ended up having to contact a professional exterminator's services, after which the ants finally disappeared altogether. It was explained to me that either the original colony was much too large for Terro to eradicate by itself, or the colony did fall but other new ones moved in to take its place. Since the bait is extremely attractive to sweet-eating ants, and they can smell it from far away, it's never going to be a good long-term prevention measure against them. On top of their general ineffectiveness, they are also not that user-friendly. Even with the new twist-off tabs that replaced the old style that required you to cut the bait stations open with scissors, they can still be difficult to open without hassle and without accidentally spilling the bait in the process (very sticky and messy to clean up). Plus you also need to make sure that the opening creates enough of a smooth "ramp" for the ants to quickly find and climb up to reach the liquid. You also have to place them in a way that they won't be disturbed or moved unnecessarily, and it's not that easy to tell when one of them is about empty because the label on top blocks the view of the liquid inside. While boric acid is allegedly less toxic to pets and children, the poisoning risk does exist, and the bait stations are unfortunately very easy to be knocked over or picked up, and the design doesn't prevent accidental spills. At most, I'd recommend this for light or early ant infestations or as an adjunct to a broader ant prevention program, and only if there aren't pets or kids around.
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