Not only are ants attracted to sugary foods, but they also need to have protein in their diet too. This means that if they should happen to smell raw or cooked meat in your home, they may come and check it out. Also, ants are going to be looking for greasy and oily foods as well.
Access to food is the most common reason why ants choose to nest in your home. Although ants are attracted to almost all types of human food, they are particularly drawn to sweets such as honey, candies, jellies, or syrup. Food spills, scraps, and messes are also tempting sources of foods.
Peppermint
Peppermint is a natural insect repellent that may effectively deter ants and other bugs, such as mosquitoes. To use peppermint essential oil as an ant deterrent, complete the following steps: Mix 10 to 20 drops peppermint essential oil with 2 cups water in a clean plastic spray bottle.
Peppermint is a natural insect repellant. You can plant mint around your home or use the essential oil of peppermint as a natural remedy for control of ants. Ants hate the smell, and your home will smell minty fresh! Plant mint around entryways and the perimeter of your home.
Lavender may smell pleasant to humans but it's not so popular with ants, flies, moths, fleas and mosquitoes. A pot near your door can keep ants away; lavender in boiled water is thought to repel ants; and the oil can help to keep skin bite-free.
Sweet Smelling Things Attract Ants
It is no secret that one of the things that attracts ants more than anything else is sugar.
Better Than Hopscotch: Ants will not cross a chalk line. Draw a chalk line in front of exterior doors, to prevent ants from coming into the house. You can also draw a chalk line around tables on the porch or patio, to keep pesky ants away while dining outdoors.
Ants hate the smell of strong citrus fruits. Save your orange, lemon and grapefruit peels and scatter them around entry points. It's a natural way to deter ants without harming them.
Ants hate the scent of lemon
It is common knowledge that lemon not only become great addition to both food and beverages, more than that… lemon is also great natural options to repel ants that you can try at home!
Ants hate Vinegar. The smell of Vinegar will cause them to stay away from it or permanently leave the house. Ants crawl in a straight line, marching towards the food sources. The Vinegar solution will interfere with these pheromones, and the ants will get lost.
Perfumes and essential oils can be used to help deter ants. They can keep ants away from your home. The perfume will leave its scent without the hassle of stains and cleaning it up after application. Many people will also use products such as boric acid to repel ants and other pests.
"The scent of eucalyptus is the driving factor that keeps insects out of your home," says Evie. "Add sprigs of eucalyptus around your bathroom, kitchen and living room. You can also mix a few leaves with witch hazel and water and spray any areas that ants can gather."
Carnivorous ants show no such preference. Ants prefer salty snacks to sugary ones, at least in inland areas that tend to be salt-poor, according to a new study published this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Killing ants will, definitely, attract more ants because the dead ants release pheromones that attract or rather alert, nearby ants.
Crazy ants are attracted, not so much to sweets or starches, but to electricity. That's right, electricity! They will infest televisions, gaming systems, stereo equipment, and machinery of all sorts; and when they invade, it is by the hundreds or perhaps more!
Ants like living in warm environments but do not like extreme temperatures, whether too hot or too cold. During the winter season, ants will more likely come into your home, as opposed to summer. The reason being because they cannot survive in low temperatures.
Use citrus, like lemons, oranges, or grapefruit and harnesses the power of d-limonene — the acidic oil found in the peels. This oil is toxic to ants (so it will kill them on contact) and it messes up their trail, so live ones won't be able to find the food source.
Apple Cider Vinegar
Ants use scent to follow each other in their infamous marching line. Disrupt the scent with apple cider vinegar. Make a spray of one part apple cider vinegar to one part water, and apply wherever a conga line starts to form. Repeat applications until the ant parade comes to permanent halt.
While the average home supply store has a number of ant poisons or comparable items, if you have pets or children, you most likely won't want to expose your house to a toxic barrage of chemicals. However, certain household products such as air fresheners can be just as effective at killing ants as the average chemical.
Cayenne pepper / Black pepper
How it works: The spicy, strong scent of cayenne pepper (or black pepper, if that's what you have) irritates ants, and they try to avoid it. Pepper's scent also masks the ants' pheromone trails that lead them to food sources in your yard and home.
Boric acid is a fairly common form of pest control that kills insects upon ingestion. Mixing boric acid with another substance that attracts ants, like sugar or honey, will lure them in and then shock their central nervous system.
Ants become the pallbearer
After a few days the dead ant is carried off and placed on the “ant graveyard” by the other dead ants. This may seem like ants have complex feelings and need a few days to grieve before they dispose of the body, but in reality it's far more chemical than that.
In the insect world, it's usually butterflies that are associated with social behavior, but according to a new study it's ants that really can't live without their peers … literally. Discovery News reports that ants died after just 6 days of isolation, whereas the socially integrated controls lived for up to 66 days.