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With sexual maturity, ants grow wings. While they are not dangerous on mating flight, they can become a real nuisance. We explain how to fight flying ants with effective home remedies.

In a nutshell

  • winged ants are not a separate species, but merely sexually mature “normal” ants on their mating flight
  • Avoid chemical insecticides as they can be dangerous to many beneficial insects, including humans
  • Avoid attractive food sources such as sweets or decomposing organic waste
  • Effective home remedies keep the flying ants away without killing the beneficial insects

Fight or keep away?

Before you start, you should realize one thing: flying ants are not dangerous. Only during the mating season do the sexually mature animals of the native garden ant grow wings, so that mating and the establishment of a new colony takes place in flight. Therefore, do not use chemical insecticides to really “fight” them. You also kill numerous other beneficial insects and can even harm humans. Instead, focus on keeping the animals away. Well-known and effective home remedies offer you a bulging toolbox:

Avoid food sources

Ants in general, and flying ants in particular, love easily accessible food sources. Flying animals have a particularly high need for food, since flying costs much more energy and, in addition, food is an essential prerequisite for establishing a new colony. All foods with a high energy content in the form of sugar or carbohydrates are particularly attractive, such as:

  • desserts
  • cakes and cookies
  • bread and other baked goods
  • Sugary drinks such as soft drinks, fruit juices etc.
  • fruit
  • Organic waste (intensely scented, sugary decomposition products)

Remove these unknowingly placed attractants from your haunts. Terraces or living rooms appear less attractive and are no longer targeted as potential breeding grounds.

Attention: Don't just cover your groceries. So flying ants no longer reach the food supply, but are still attracted by the escaping scent. Instead, you should remove the food completely, or at least pack it in airtight and odor-tight containers.

fly screen

Equip your windows and balcony or patio doors with fly screens. In this way you can permanently and effectively prevent flying ants from gaining access to your living space. On the one hand, their food stays intact. On the other hand, you also prevent the animals from founding a new colony in the sheltered environment of your home that is close to the food. This not only keeps flying ants away, but also any form of ants, ant streets or ant nests. Effective protective measures for windows are:

  • fly screen blinds
  • Clamping frame with fly screens
  • Beaded or String Curtains
  • closed curtains

Scents that keep you away

For many people, lavender is one of the typical garden and patio smells. Because the plants are suitable in many ways for an uncomplicated garden design. Ants, on the other hand, do not like the aroma at all and avoid the vicinity of lavender plants. Use the fragrance in your favor in numerous possible ways:

  • permanently planted shrubs in the flower bed
  • flexibly positionable lavender plants in the plant pot
  • Scented candles with lavender aroma
  • Lavender oil in the vaporizer or as potpourri

Once the scent has spread, the flying ants will avoid the area from afar.

Tip: Use live lavender plants whenever possible. On the one hand, the scent is more intense and, on the other hand, it lasts for a long time. Artificial fragrance distributors, on the other hand, have to be refilled, ignited or otherwise set in motion again and again.

Perfumes that expel

But what to do when flying ants are already there and may even have started building a nest? Here, too, there is a solution in the form of proven fragrances as harmless and at the same time effective home remedies: acid. Although ants produce acid themselves, they do not like other acids around them. Typical substances from the domestic pantry are:

  • vinegar
  • citric acid dissolved in water
  • lemon juice

Water the areas frequented by the animals regularly to make these areas unattractive. Within a short time, the flying ants will abandon their nest-building efforts and look elsewhere. It is important to use acid again and again until the ants have disappeared, so that a permanently acidic cloud of scent is formed.

Tip: Really only treat the immediate areas of the patio or balcony. Offer the ants other, uncritical areas of the garden for building their nests. This increases the probability of a quick move.

close nest entrances

It is simply not possible to close all the cracks and joints in the house that are suitable for a potential ant nest, even in new buildings. However, as soon as you realize that flying ants are always in a certain corner, a hole, a gap or other trouble spots, you have to prepare yourself for the forthcoming nest building. Seal the affected joints and thus deny the animals access to the chosen nesting site. Different possibilities are these:

Temporary:

  • duct tape
  • Cling film (adheres to surfaces)
  • Paper or aluminum foil (rolled and pressed into the joint)

Continuous:

  • silicone
  • acrylic (paintable)
  • Filler (matched to the substrate)
  • Other suitable building materials

Attention: When closing the joints, make sure that even small openings are sufficient to allow the flying ants access. Work thoroughly and, if necessary, in multiple shifts.

frequently asked Questions

Again and again one reads of baking powder, deer horn salt or baking soda as effective home remedies against ants. Do these remedies also help against flying ants?

Whether flying ants or non-winged animals - avoid these remedies at all costs. By consuming these substances, the ants die in agony. Because of their useful properties, however, you should not kill them, just evict them from your own holding areas. It is therefore better to rely on the home remedies described.

Again and again I find wings on the terrace, which probably come from flying ants. Are there animals that eat flying ants and are therefore perhaps also suitable for fighting them?

If you find wings of the ants, they have already started building their nest. Then the animals lose their wings so that they are not obstructed in the narrow passages of the new nest.

I have had great success against flying ants with a fly swatter. How is this method to be evaluated?

With a fly swatter you kill single individuals. But the reason that brought the animals to you is still there. Instead, avoid food offerings and use deterrent scents to generally keep non-winged ants away.

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Category:

Animals in the garden