Ants, ants everywhere

[Cheezy]

If you have a problem with them farming black fly on your broad beans then put jam at the base of your plants.

Maybe I've taken this quite literally but do you spread the jam on the plant itself? About to try this with my runner beans - do I paste it round the base stalk?

I'm about to sacrafic some scrummy homemade jam here and didn't want tp waste it / make matters worse getting it wrong.

Thanks for the tip by the way. Till now I've been a saddo and looking for ladybirds and their larvae on other plants to transfer from their happy resting places to my runners beans for a feast

You don't put it on the plant , just near , preferably in the ants path so they get to it straight away. I've noticed that it takes a while for ants to "reprogamme" their mission. You'll get less and less on the plant. I think the ones in transit carry on with their original mission, and only get up dated once they get back to the nest.

[kevin m.]

I've never had any trouble with Ants.True,I do see them running about the allotment,somewhat randomly,and one day when we were re-laying some paving,we uncovered an Ants' nest,and watched in wonder as the workers picked up the eggs and took them to safety,-but they have never done me any harm.
So,it always amazes me that when I visit a particular well known budget store (P****stretcher),no mattter what month of the year it is,they always seem to have shelves full of ANTKILLER.
Does their chief buyer have some kind of Ant phobia?
Did he/she get terrified as a child watching the 'B' movie 'Them'?
Are the Ants about to take over?
I think we should be told!

[Chickpea]

There's ants and there's ants.

There are black ants on my allotment - they do no harm to my plants or to people. I leave them alone.

There are red ants in my garden. They are aggressive and their bites hurt like hell for days. I had a crisis yesterday evening when my 8-year-old-son was bit on the eyebrow by one and became quite hysterical. At first I thought he had been stung by a wasp from the noise he was making, but no, just a red ant. Normally I leave them alone, but I considered waging war on them after that.

Then there are ants that get in your kitchen and get into your food. Seiving the ants out of your flour before you can make bread is not a nice proposition. When that happens humans declare war on ants.

So I understand why the shops are full of ant killer, even though I don't use it myself.

[Cheezy]

Then there are ants that get in your kitchen and get into your food. Seiving the ants out of your flour before you can make bread is not a nice proposition. When that happens humans declare war on ants.

So I understand why the shops are full of ant killer, even though I don't use it myself.

The thing is, if there any " excuse" the ants will come in to the kitchen.
However they are not clever. They always send scouts, who then relay a message that something sweet and nice is to be had in this new place.
The ants that used to come into our kitchen where either early ones just as it was warming up, or summer ones looking for food. Keep all sweet things in either the fridge or kilner jars or tupperware, and all "sweet jars" wiped clean or else they will come in. After that the poison bate they take back to the nest to feed the young is quite effective, though not instent.
If there is nothing to be had in your kitchen , then they will have no interest. They only operate on scouts and chance. take away the chance and you will not be bothered. However one slip and its a devil of a job to stop them coming in, because they have been programmed to go to the same spot as the other ants have just got food from.

The ol Bob Flowerdew subderfuge trick of putting jam down near a plant will also divert yer ants coming into the house. You need to identify where they are coming in, and their path to nest, and try putting some jam in betweem. make sure the original target in the house has been stopped , and they will not come into the house, they are creatues of economy.

[PurpleDragon]

I just read the other day that they hate aspartame. I think they wont crawl over it, or it kills them, or something.

[Chickpea]

Could be, but it sounds like more anti-aspartame moral panic to me.

I'm not a fan of aspartame, but there is a lot of rubbish talked about it.

It's all debunked on the Snopes website:
http://www.snopes.com/medical/toxins/aspartame.asp

[PurpleDragon]

It's annoying that I can't remember where I saw the reference.

[digiveg]

Ants are incredibly hard workers - and they won't bother with something that isn't producing result. Where I once lived, they would be all over anything that was edible within a few minutes - so, we just got very very good at NOT leaving anything out that they would eat, inside the house, and made sure that ALL our storage jars shut tight.

Then they just go elsewhere. They're not stupid.

But don't poison them - when you accidentally unearth one of their 'cities', you get an idea of the level of cooperation and organisation that it takes to build and maintain an ant nest. It's utterly amazing, and not something to destroy out of hand.

We learned to live with them, and got a lot tidier in the process! And now... no ant problems! For years!

Karma, I reckon...