I got tired of buying Terro for $4 a vial. Especially now. For some reason my ants don’t touch it anymore. They test it and walk off. I tried some other baits. $20 worth of alternate brands and no luck. If they don’t eat it they don’t poison their colony.
They eat everything else except ant bait.
I watched some YouTube and noticed people mix 20 Mule Team Borax with sugar and they say it kills the ants at a fraction the price of Terro. The Terro MSDS says it’s basically sugar with 2% Borax. I have a lifetime supply of borax from my bronze brazing project. $4 a box.
I got a little too smart and picked up some Aldi pancake syrup for $1.50. 100% high fructose corn syrup. It seemed easier to mix up. The ants didn’t want it.
At this point I was pretty frustrated.
A few days ago I broke down and raided our organic granulated sugar bag. Mixed 5% borax powder with some water and sugar to make syrup. Very roughly measured 20 pinches of sugar to one pinch of borax. Add some water to dissolve it. Laid it out on a piece of aluminum foil. The ants devoured it. They loved it. Two days later they’re gone. There is bit of bait left but no more ants.
Note to self. Don’t eat high fructose corn syrup. The ants know something. I had all but convinced myself that if they didn’t want pancake syrup they wouldn’t want sugar. Wrong.
I wonder why they eat my sugar water/borax mix but they pass the Terro? It’s an infinitely better deal than Terro because my ants eat it. My best guess is that it’s overused in my neighborhood. Like Victor rat traps are 100% ineffective on my rats.
Flux. Borax laundry booster. Pure borax crystal. Twenty pinches of sugar:1 pinch of borax. Add water till it becomes a thick syrup.
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