"George E. Cawthon" wrote in message
...
Avery wrote:
On Sun, 10 Apr 2005 22:30:44 -0400, John/Charleston
wrote:


On Sun, 10 Apr 2005 20:59:13 -0400, allan allan at his dot com
wrote:


spring in Wash Dc and I get little black ants in kitchen and laundry
room making a trail if there is any food in the sink, even to cloths
on the washer. Both next to an outside wall, any ideas.

I used to get them in a house I lived in and I'm not too keen on
chemical pesticides. What seemed to work was to buy boric acid
powder (it's often sold as roach powder) and mix it with honey to make
a paste. The little black ants are also known as "sugar ants" and
they seemed to gather around it and take it in as food to take back to
their nest. For some reason it seemed to work for a while but
eventually (months later) they would come back and I'd repeat the
process. Better than chemicals imo.



Since when has boric acid NOT been a chemical.

I think he meant insecticide, which it is not. It
works by physical action not chemical. Besides it
is not toxic; standard chemical for washing eyes.

Anything that kills an insect is by definition an insecticide.

How does it work by physical action?

When those worker ants take it back to the nest, if they don't die on the
way from eating too much, they feed it to the queen who is poisoned by it
and the nest ultimately perishes. As to toxicity, a small amount ingested
can be very serious for small children. In eyewashes it is applied
externally, not ingested.