For those plagued by "sugar" ants (ie, not fire or carpenter ants):
OK, I finally managed to get rid of the ones pestering my beardie (and infesting my kitchen, bathroom, etc.), without any poison:
First, some background to clarify which ant we're talking about -
These Argentine ants, native to South America, are the tiny black ants known as sugar ants, because they prefer sugar over protein (unlike the nasty biting little red ants). They were introduced accidentally, imported by coffee shipments to New Orleans around 1890. Since that time they have spread throughout most of the nation, and are now wreaking havoc on native ant populations. They are particularly a problem when it comes to horned lizards here in the southwest; these ants kill the ants the horned lizards eat, and the honred lizards do not eat the Argentine ants, causing a serious problem for this already endangered to rare genus of lizard.
Unfortunately, "just" killing the queen is not so easily done, as a former post suggested. Argentine ants have a special social structure. While most ant colonies have only one queen, Argentine ants can have many, up to 8 to 10 prr 1,000 workers. All male ants hatch from unfertilized eggs, and their only role is to mate with the queens. Fertilized eggs hatch into females, which are usually sterile workers = the scouts that wander all over your house to find food. The queens don't normally leave the nest, so she won't find the poison. So, if you are giving them poison, it has to be a kind that doesn't kill them on the spot, but one they take back to the nest. also, if you have curious pets, like my dogs and cats, any poison lying around, whether enclosed or not, if it is chewable, or accesible, or can get into the air (like a dust), it is a risk, and obviously you don't want poison fumes, or bleach fumes near your dragon (I have used bleach in the past in the bathroom for ants.)
By the way, if you see sugar ants all over your plants, it is probably because they actually milk aphids, and those annoying plant killers called scales, they aren't the ones killing the plant, unless they have a huge colony in its roots.
There are two things you can try that organic farmers and another biologist have told me about:
The first is a bait you can make yourself, the ants eat it, take it back to the nest, regurgitate it as the normally do to feed the others, and it kills off the colony that way. It's called Boric Acid syrup ant bait:
Mix 1 cup of sugar, 2 cups of water, and 1 to 2 teaspoons of Boric acid (less toxic than table salt to humans.) Put this in a soda/water bottle, stuff cotton in the top, and gently turn it on its side and put the mouth of the bottle at the source of where the ants are coming from. make several,if the ants are coming from various holes, sources.
Another thing you can try, which I have been told works well, although I have not tried it myself, is a botanical pesticide, non-toxic to vertebrates, bit kills invertebrates, because the citrus-based oils in it breaks down the waxy lining they need in their respiratory passages.
It is called Bugs'R'Done, and you can check it out on this website, http://www.enviroman.net/ant-killer.html.
There may be other botanical pesticides as well if you look around, I know of an entomologist who collected insects in the rain forest by spraying this stuff made from flower extracts; I watched as it killed bugs immediately, but didn't effect vertebrates at all.
As a wildlife biologist who has done research here and in South Amercia, I've noticed it is interesting how people here vs. in the tropics have very different attitudes about ants, I guess because they are so abundant, they are just acccepted as a part of life, in the boonies, anyway, there were so many it was a losing battle to fight them. Or maybe it is because they know that Argentine ants will kill off colonies of termites! But I certainly don't want the buggers in my dragon's cage or my sugar bowl, either.
Good luck, and if anyone has any other non-toxic formulas that work, please share!
Renee
