I wondered when someone would write about the tiny black ants that must annoy hundreds of The Fiji Times readers these days, so was pleased to see Antoine N’yeurt’s letter published last Saturday (FT 04/03).
Several past letters I’ve written on similarly mundane topics, never saw print, so I thought it best to let others complain about the ants and hoped an academic or government entomologist might eventually weigh in on the subject. Have the dreaded ants invaded darkest Flagstaff already?
Have they spread as far as Kava Place in Lautoka?
Early last year, I rang the Agriculture Department, but got no useful information about the ants.
It has been more than two years now since I first noticed legions of the small (2mm) black ants in my back yard on Tamavua ridge. I’d been living here more than 10 years and never noticed such ants before, so thought they must be an invasive species. They soon invaded my house, but are not particularly attracted to food in the kitchen and are too small to give much of a bite. They love to explore walls and ceilings and multiply rapidly. laying eggs inside dresser drawers, bookcases, window screen frames etc. They congregate around light switches and their tiny bodies can short-out electrical circuits. Outside they are found on every tree and bush and every flower and fruit, although no serious damage to fruit is apparent.
At first I killed them with the usual aerosol insect sprays from supermarkets but their numbers were too great and spraying cans of that stuff everywhere was expensive and smelly. Ant chalk is a good deterrent for inside the house and early on I started filling window spray bottles with a mix of vinegar and water that killed ants on contact although more ants often appeared the very next day.
Even so, I kept that up for some months, but using so much vinegar was costly and proved to be too corrosive inside the house.
I learned from The Fiji Times article by Nanise Loanakadavu “Getting rid of ants naturally” (FT June 10, 2016) that a bit of liquid soap mixed with water in a spray bottle will kill ants just as well, so I quit using vinegar. But the real breakthrough came when I visited Garden City and got advice from Mrs Wah Sing, who recommended borax powder as well as a liquid pyrethroid insecticide.
She reckons borax mixed with sugar is most effective in getting rid of ants although it takes a while.
So, I sprinkle borax mixed with sugar here and there, but am not sure how effective that is since a bottle cap of the liquid insecticide mixed with water in a three litre pressure sprayer kills ants on contact. They don’t reappear for several days or longer if there isn’t much rain.
A one litre bottle of insecticide can last for several months if mixing just a capful with three litres of water and spraying that around the house and garden once a week will keep ants at bay.
If you have money to burn, professional pest control spraying may get rid of ants for a while but they will return sooner or later and sooner if frequent rain washes away the poison outside.
