ants galore

I live in a very old house - about his time of year - every year we are overrun with ants - small reddish brown ants. I have tried everything short of using chemical pesticides. Everything works for a time and then no....

However when I am out in the gardens - any time from spring til frost - I am blown away by how many thousands of ants there are on the property. I mean you can look at the ground it is literally undulating with these same small ants. It gets worse when it is dry

The question I post is simple: why are there so many ants on the property in general? Pests usually don't stay unless there is a food supply. and water supply. Why here? We don't keep food open near the house nor are the compost bins near. I could see if they were down there but they everywhere on the property

Does anyone else have this problem - or can comment about the sheer number of a certain insect and what you can do about it.

Lots of people have problems with ants, you're definitely not alone! If they're coming into your house, I've found the boric acid ant baits work well, it's nontoxic to pretty much everything but the ants so you don't have to worry as much about kids/pets. I'm not sure what all things ants eat, but pretty much everyone has ants in their garden so they must be finding things to eat. And they can probably drink water from dew that collects on leaves in the morning.

Short of nuking your whole garden with chemicals, I'm not sure if you could get rid of them from your garden, but they won't hurt your plants. The only thing to watch out for is if you see them crawling all over certain plants (rather than just generally crawling around on the ground), check the plant for aphids or scale, they both secrete honeydew which the ants love

I agree they don't seem to hurt the plants - do you have so very many? I am not trying to eliminaing them from the garden - just trying to understand their function in such a strong presence and what it means.

I have not used a poison on the property and would prefer never to

I have tried the boric acid hundreds of times - works great - they are gone about a month - then they come back stronger. It appears they are immune - is that possible. Have tried covering everything with diatomaticous earth - works but limited in scope.

I have tried ant traps and sealing any crack they are exploiting but each day come down to a kitchen full of ants.

They're not immune to boric acid, problem is you probably have multiple colonies (if that's the right word) of ants on your property, you get rid of one group but there are plenty more to come back and take their place.

I've also heard they won't go across cinnamon, so if you know where they usually sneak in through, try sprinkling a line of cinnamon there and see if that keeps them out of the house.

well try it and get back

the plan - will use boric acid to knock out this colony - then apply cinnamon