ants?

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getakey

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I was surprised to find ants on my boat this past weekend. I'm in one of the furthest slips from the shore. They would have to travel up one of the dock lines to get on/off. Can ants set up nests in the docks?
 
At my new dock I have been warned to spray all the dock lines to keep the ants off the boat. Plan on doing it every couple of months.
 
Terro... works wonders. You leave a few little pools on some wax boxing that they provide, the ants drink the sugary mixture and return to the nest where they feed the poison back to all the nymphs and other ants. If you choose to go this route, be warned that it is not recommended for dogs to lick up the solution. Used it for years with great results... its kind of fun to sit around and watch the dot of Terro turn blacks with ants licking it. Keep an eye on the amount of terro on the card because they will drink it all and it will need replenishing.
 
Damn; that sounds better than Tanqueray on the rocks !!
 
I had some ants in both my home and shop. I made my own insecticide from Boric Acid, Sugar and Water. I soaked it up in cotton balls and stuck the balls in bottle caps and set them in the infested areas. It took a few days but that was almost a year ago and they never returned. You want to make it weak enough so that they live to take it back to the queen. I'm not sure whose recipe I followed but there are many on google. Here's one of them:

Boric acid powder mixed with sugar will help eliminate ant problems. Make the insecticide bait by mixing 1 part of boric acid with 9 parts of sugar. Stir the mixture into a small bowl of water until the powder is dissolved. Soak cotton balls in the liquid. Purchase small, plastic, disposal food containers to hold the bait. Punch holes in the container to allow the ants access. Place the soaked cotton balls on the inside and seal with the lid. Place the containers anywhere you suspect ant activity. The worker ants will carry the boric acid back to the queen and the entire colony will be eliminated. An article by Howard Garrett in "The Dallas Morning News" advises against using too much boric acid in the baits. Baits with more than 10 percent boric acid will make the mixture distasteful, thereby defeating its insecticide purpose.

It really worked and lasted for me.
 
quote:
Originally posted by Thudpucker

Are you sure it was ants and not Termites!

Click to expand...

ants for sure
and thanks all for the advice
totally surprised that they are living on the docks and can make it onto the boat
 
I had ants on my boat onetime...along with several of my berth neighbors! What a mess! Turns out one of the workers on my boat spilled some sugary soda and just wiped a rag over it instead of thoroughly cleaning up the spill.

Once I finally got all the mess cleaned up, I put a bead of liquid detergent around each cleat or ring which had a dock line going to the boat. For some reason, ants will not cross a bead of liquid detergent. I never had any more ants on my boat, but my neighbors did......
 
I use a solution of boric acid, sugar and water to control the waves of ants that seasonally come to visit the home here. The effect is the same as LBDBoater's Terro- the ants take it back and share it with the colony if they can still find it. I find they tend to get very lost on the way back. It does work.
http://www.ehow.com/way_5953282_boric-acid-ant-problems.html
 
If pets are an issue, try small clumps of corn meal in the area of the infestation. The ants can't digest the meal and die.
 
Had ants. Tried terro, tried boric, gave plenty of days for it to work. They ate it for dessert. Tried another green remedy with sugar in the middle of a small water tray. . . .finally bought RAID spray, fogged behind the panels where they were travelling. Finally . . . dead ants.
 
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