Ant hills are pesky little things. You step on them and they crumble, but they always seem to come back. You can try to get rid of them with pesticides, but that only seems to make them mad. So how do you get rid of ant hills for good? Keep reading to find out!
What are Ant Hills?
An ant hill is a pitch of soil that you will always see on the ground floor. It could be in your garden or just anywhere with soil on the bare ground.
Majorly, an ant hill is made up of dirt, sand, tiny stones, clay, and different decomposed organic matter types. You will find ant hill anytime the queen and the worker ants want to find a safe new home for the ant colony.
You will see the mound when the ants have dug and want to pull out the dirt from the underground to the outside world. The ant nest’s look takes a dome-like shape as a result of the never-ending earth displacement.
Additionally, the worker ants dig the ground continuously to create channels of tunnels that will house the colony as they grow in numbers. The more they grow in numbers, the more the tunnel expands to accommodate each ant. Ant’s colony can rise to thousands and millions.
There are instances where the worker ants find every means to mix mud and sand with the tiniest of sticks to make sure the mound’s structure is pretty strong for the colony.
Doing this helps maintain the nest’s integrity and protect it against a series of harsh weather conditions like heavy rain, and winds. Forested areas bring about hand hill that comes with plants as cover.
This is primarily based on the fact that the worker ants sometimes move along with seeds while digging the soil. This sometimes serves as a means of protection for the ant colony.
READ MORE: How to Get Rid of Ants in Carpets.
How to Get Rid of Ant Hills.
It isn’t much of a challenge if you have ants in your surroundings, mostly when small. However, when the ants are becoming too much, they might eventually start finding their way into your home. If it ever gets to this case, you will need to take severe actions against the ants.
The fundamental truth is that ants multiply pretty fast, and you may find it hard to locate their whereabouts because they are often safely hidden in an ant hill. Hence, the reason why you keep seeing other ant hills in your garden or on the floor of your compound.
In some cases, finding an ant hill becomes very difficult because they are well hidden away from the regular place you will readily think of, like the corner of your home. Additionally, locating an ant hill position in some other cases may be easy because the mound is big and pretty visible.
Another place to find ant hill is the interior of your walls or corner of your basement. You can only experience this when you are dealing with carpenter ants. Overall, there are different ways available that will make you quickly destroy and get rid of the ant hill.
Some of the remedies will be discussed below. However, before that, it is essential to discuss some particular information that matters to getting rid of an ant hill.
Inspection: The moment you have figured out the presence of ant hill on your home ground, carry on by inspecting the ground for more mounds. You must pay attention to any form of ant trails or ant activity on your home ground. Doing all of these will help you quickly gain knowledge on where to apply your pesticide.
Places to Look
it is essential to know that ant hills are always present in areas where they can have easy access to food. If you don’t do regular clean-up around your home, it could attract ants to your home.
Immediately they find a place to build a mound; they will travel from their nest to come and develop tunnels of ant hills in your surroundings.
Ants have pheromones that serve as trail marks for them when looking for a place to nest. Once the ants find a place to be a source of food, they lay their pheromones on the food path and trace it back to create a nest in your home.
Things to look for
It is not that difficult to locate ant hills; however, you might find out that some ant hills are situated in a place you will not readily think of. However, the moment you notice a trail, gently focus on the ant’s movement, and they may lead you to the ant hill’s location.
READ MORE: What Do Ants Eat – Types of ants and their food.
How to Get Rid of Ant hills in Yard.
To exterminate ant hills in your yard, you need to make use of pesticides. These pesticides were designed to have a lasting effect that will rid your yard of the ant hills very quickly. The good news about these pesticides is that they last for as long as five to six months before you will have to treat your yard again.
Additionally, you need to spray the insecticide on the ant mound for effectiveness directly. Also, the best advice for you is to carry out the application of these pesticides during the ants’ active hours. Desist against the use of liquid pesticides as they can have adverse effects on your home’s surroundings. However, if you are a professional ant exterminator, you do this by following your training.
Please make use of powdered pesticides too as they are active in getting rid of ant hills. They are also a means to stop the growth of ants in your house for a long time.
How to Get Rid of Large Ant hills.
To get rid of large ant hills, you need to focus on a series of options. Once you have the right tools in place, it becomes easy for you to rid your home of large ant hills. Follow the steps below to stop large ant hills in your yard.
1. Cut down the grass.
The first option here is to cut down the grasses surrounding the large ant hills. Make sure it stays as low as possible.
2. Make Use of Insecticides.
We have a list of insecticides that works pretty fast, and they have been reviewed in the next section of this article. All you need to do is create a barrier that surrounds the large ant hills and applies any of these two products. Make sure both of these products are generously used for the best of action on the ant hills.
3. Flattening Out the Ant Hill
The ants, when building their nest may have created a pretty solid ant hill. If this is the case, the immediate solution is the flatten the surface of the ant hill.
Flattening the surface might be through the use of rakes and other farming tools. Once the ant hill’s ground is flattened, the ants will not have an entrance to their nest again.
The flattening out process is not something you will carry out just once because the ants are always trying to rebuild after an assault. You need to carry out this process several times until the ants are convinced that nesting on your ground is dangerous to their survival. You can choose this process only if you want to avoid the use of chemicals.
Insecticides to get rid of Ant hills.
Killing and destroying ant hills is not a day job. It requires different techniques for different ants. Some of the methods include chemicals, professional methods, and natural methods. However, in the case of chemicals, some products come in handy for the destruction of ant hills.
This is one of the most impressive products that will effectively help you eliminate ant hills in your home. It is a product that destroys fire ants without leaving a chance for another colony to resurface. The product targets the queen of the settlement and kills her immediately. All forms of mounds will also get exterminated.
The Amdro ant block is a bait that you leave on the ground for ants. They will pick it up and take it back to their colony. The product will immediately start the job of destroying the settlement once it has entered into their nest.
To use this product effectively, all you need to do is sprinkle it on the ant trails. You should spread on the pheromones trail. Doing this will mean the worker ants will bring it with them into their nest. It can kill up to 25 species of ants, which makes it super-efficient.
READ MORE: How To Get Rid Of Flying Ants.
How to Get Rid of Ant Hills Naturally
Getting naturally rid of ant hills is something that needs maximum care. You must get rid of the queen. Once this is done, there is a big chance that the ant hills will never resurface in your compound again. However, in terms of effectiveness, these natural methods do not eliminate the ant hills as much as the products listed above.
- DIY Baits for Ants
If you have borax or you try to get one, you can mix it with peanut butter, sugar, or honey to bait the ants. The moment the bait is taken back to the colony and the queen eats it, that will be the death of the whole colony.
- Boiling water
Hot or boiled water is one of the simplest most effective ways to get rid of ant hills. In this case, all you need to do is to locate the ant hill, boil water, and pour the hot water on the ant hill.
The hot water will immediately infiltrate the ant colony’s tunnel and the steam will begin to kill all the ants in the tunnel.
One of the advantages of hot water is that the steam from the water also plays a significant role in eliminating the ants. If the water is unable to touch some of the ants, the steam from the boiled water will do the job pretty quickly.
In some cases, this process may seem very helpful, and you may feel like you have won the battle against the ants.
However, that is often not the case because some ants may be deeply embedded in the soil and find a way to survive the hot water assault. When this happens, the surviving ants will regroup, and within a few days; they begin to restructure the colony.
World’s Biggest Ant Hills
One fact about ants that is well known to the world is their unmatched level of organization. Also, they grow in numbers pretty fast, and the quality of their mounds is why they are almost everywhere in the world. All of these features, combined is why they have the possibility of being too much to control.
During the early days of the millennium, a supercolony of ants was discovered in the southern part of Europe. These ants are popularly known as the argentine ants. The colony is vast in size, and it takes about 3700 miles in space. The colony of these ants is home to millions of nests, and billions of ant workers.
Conclusion
Ant hills can become irritating when you keep seeing them in your home. However, going through this article will help you a great deal in getting rid of ant hills. Make use of the products, and methods listed above to exterminate all forms of ant hills surfacing in your yard.