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Finding ants around your kitchen?
Many insects work like machines, and ants a prime examples of that. They have two functions: grow the colony and protect the queens.
To grow the colony, all they need is food and water. That’s why 9 out of 10 times you’re going to see ants in your kitchen. When they’re not building out the colony or protecting and grooming eggs, ants are always out and about gathering food.
In this article (and video), pest expert Kevin Carrillo from MMPC talks about how to get rid of ants in your kitchen:
Here’s How to Get Rid of Ants in Your Kitchen
1. Reduce Their Access to Food
To keep ants out of your kitchen, the number one things to do is remove as much food as possible.
What most people don’t realize is that ants don’t need a lot of food. If you’ve left a couple of crumbs in a catch tray or toaster, if there’s a few pieces of pasta that rolled under the range of your stove, or if you accidentally kicked an old piece of cereal under your fridge, these tidbits can be enough to feed a small colony of ants for a couple of days.
If you have pets, the chance of ants being attracted by food around goes up exponentially in terms of the kibble and bits of food that get scattered around the kitchen.
- Carefully look through all of these areas where food may have been kicked aside or swept under.
- If you can do so safely, pull out appliances to look behind and underneath them.
- Give your kitchen a very thorough and deep clean.
2. Reduce Their Access to Water
After removing food, the next part is removing sources of water. Like with food, ants only need tiny droplets of water. It’s not something you can keep up with all the time, but when you’re actively dealing with ants, you’ll want to make sure everything in your kitchen is bone dry.
- After using the sink, use a towel to wipe the interior dry and eliminate as much water as you can.
- Get a silicone cover to put on top of the drain.
- Lock up water as much as you can to stop ants from getting to it.
By removing food and water sources, you’re giving the ants less of a reason to be there and most likely they will very quickly start looking for other places to be. If there’s no more food or water, there’s no longer any reason for ants to be in your kitchen.
3. Use Granular Ant Bait
But if you’re still seeing ants, it means that most likely you already have a satellite colony in the walls or floors of your kitchen.
If that happens, we recommend using granular ant bait, which consists of a food attractant (such as sugar) combined with an ant insecticide. Although there’s stronger stuff that you can get from pest professionals, the over-the-counter granular ant bait that you can buy at the store is still very effective.
Bait works well because ants are insects that are food-driven. An ant will bring the bait back to its colony because of its communal and social nature. Once it’s brought back, the bait (and the insecticide within) gets dispersed among the colony.
In this way, a single batch of bait can wipe out an entire season of ants relatively quickly and effectively.
If you realize that the colony is not in your kitchen, you might want to see if they’re coming from your backyard. If you have a backyard that’s very close to your kitchen, then you’ll want to look outside near trees or shrubs — especially ones that touch the walls of your home — and place your bait in those areas.
Video: How Do I Get Rid of Ants in My Kitchen?
Kevin Carrillo is a pest control specialist and a senior project manager at MMPC, as well as a contributor to wikiHow.
Based in Long Island City, MMPC provides reliable and eco-friendly pest solutions for clients of all sizes in and around the Tri-State Area. With over 25 years of experience, MMPC is one of NYC’s highest-rated pest control companies.
If you need help with ants or other pests, call (212) 219-8218 or click the button below to contact us today!