Okay, this is driving my crazy. Since it has warmed up, these little black ants are coming in my house and attacking my quakers food and water. My house is CLEAN and I have tried using cinnamon and black pepper to keep them away, but it isn't working. I am really close to calling an exterminator but I don't want chemicals in my house, especially with the bird.

Does anyone else have experience with dealing with these ants? They're the small black ones and they don't bit or anything. They just come in, single file and collect water and food from my bird and leave. They're driving me insane.

Keep a small spray bottle handy, and spray the ants with a bit of soapy water.
Set out cucumber peels or slices in the kitchen or at the ants' point of entry. Many ants have a natural aversion to cucumber. Bitter cucumbers work best.
Leave a few tea bags of mint tea near areas where the ants seem most active. Dry, crushed mint leaves or cloves also work as ant deterrents.
Trace the ant column back to their point of entry. Set any of the following items at the entry area in a small line, which ants will not cross: cayenne pepper, citrus oil (can be soaked into a piece of string), lemon juice, cinnamon or coffee grounds.

i hope this helps

any other creepers: click here: http://www.eartheasy.com/live_natpest_control.htm

there is a recipe that works using 20 mule team and mixing it with sugar and you put it on the ant mounds and it kills the entire colony

Awesome thread. I've been having the same troubles. The advice was great! I'm going to try it tonight!

lol!! This strikes me as funny and reminds me of that song 'the ants go marching one by one hurrah, hurrah!'

The little bitty tiny black ants are called sugar ants. If you live in a house and not an apartment, you can take turpentine and pour a fine stream of it around the base of the foundation. Ants won't cross the turpentine. But the suggestion that Impy gave using the 20 mule team would also work outside as well...Its Borax and it will kill them if they eat it...SO that's something to think about too and it can be used outside or inside.

Sugar ants! Didn't know that!

They were all over the place in FL as well. One day I came home from work (before I had the fids) and found a very long trail of ants along the wall, from the front door, direction of my desk and then to the floor. To the candy wrapper in the bin...

Never figured out how to keep them out but they seemed harmless so I largely ignored them but did end up keeping all food in the fridge. (One time, I'd wanted to take some bread rolls I'd bought and found ants all over them; they'd really worked on them.)

I have also heard that yuo can put chalk dust around your home and the ants won't cross the chalk either. And that is safe if you have dogs or cats.

They make a pelleted ant barrier that you sprinkle around the foundation of your home that I use. As it is outside, there is no danger to the birds. It lasts the season, then you have to redo it in the spring.

Another cheap easy one is to spray windex or another amonia cleaner where they are coming in (outside of course). Since ants use checmicals to communicate and leave trails, they're VERY sensitive to amonia. The amonia is something they want nothing to do with. My girlfriend's mom sprays it around the outsides of the windows and it keeps them away.

I don't like chemcials, but the liquid Raid works wonders! Just put some into a water bottle lid (or something similar) and put it in an area that you seem them marching around (if you have dogs or cats etc. make sure they can't get to it.) and when they find it, they all gather around it like a watering hole and drink it up... refill as needed.

Another natural method, that doesn't always work, but is worth a try is mixing sugar with baking soda. The sugar attracts them and when they eat it the baking soda kills them.

Good luck!

lol a friend of mine heard about this method on a talk show on the radio. The guest speaker was an exterminator, and he said that because ants can't pass gass, they explode from the baking soda