Getting rid of ants in a car without pesticides.

[pezzy669]

Left my car parked from 7/4-7/8 and stupidly parked under a tree and next to a dirt island (no grass will grow there due to said tree). While I was out of town some significant storms came through which caused quite a few leaves to drop into the cowl and the dirt island to plaster the drivers side of my door.

Hop in this morning and on the way to work notice a few ants crawling across the dashboard

but figured I only had a few so had my fingers crossed. We low and behold after work I hop into my car and get moving and next thing I know there are 4-5 ants crawling around on my dash and a small spider decides its an appropriate time to drop down from the rear view mirror. Now I am thinking the rain storms dropped all these bugs out of the tree right into my HVAC cowl and they found their way in. Car is clean - I don't eat it in at really mainly drink water and remove bottles and cups as soon as I park. At most a cup will sit in my car while I am at work.

So its been 90-95 here daily and the parking deck at my work is uncovered on the top level. Has anyone successfully baked bugs out of their cars parking it in the blazing sun all day? Not really interested in bug bombs and Terro would be a disaster in that it would just draw more ants in.

 

[Eddie]

Ant traps. They crawl in and die.

 

[JC1]

Depending on how anal you are about putting bait in your car, you could put a mix of borax and sugar In a container near your wheel when parked and see if they leave the car. Hopefully they don't make a nest inside your car.

You might wanna spray some parts of the car with ant b gone where the spray won't damage any plastic or paint. I would possibly spray it in the wheel wells and maybe on the top of the fire wall in the engine bay.


Others may have some better ideas.

 

[kschachn]

I've never seen ant "traps", I've only seen bait stations. There are traps?

 

[tahoe_hybrid]

Don't feed the ants and they go away..

no pesticides required


but a Mobil ant farm is interesting
Might Qualify for the HOV lane tell the officer you have 10,000 passengers on board

 

[kstanf150]

Windex with ammonia
Kills ants dead every time

 

[tahoe_hybrid]

that may damage the interior and smell of windex

 

[PimTac]

Originally Posted by tahoe_hybrid
Don't feed the ants and they go away..

no pesticides required

but a Mobil ant farm is interesting
Might Qualify for the HOV lane tell the officer you have 10,000 passengers on board

Uh huh.
Originally Posted by tahoe_hybrid
that may damage the interior and smell of windex


â™»ï¸â™»ï¸

Time to ⬛ï¸â¬›ï¸

 

[kstanf150]

Originally Posted by tahoe_hybrid
that may damage the interior and smell of windex

Oh good lord
That's absurd
Will not

 

[kschachn]

Yeah you were right there PimTac. Back again with more nonsense.

 

[Inked]

Glue traps with something ants love ( small bit of sweets or even a small potato chip in the center. Since it will be hot inside your car when unoccupied, put trap on a plate in case the glue runs but try to keep out of direct sunlight. Maybe use a sunshade on the windshield and/or park in shade while the traps are in use. Worked as an exterminator for a bit back in the 80's.

 

[earlyre]

peppermint essential oil.
it's not toxic to vertebrates, but can be a neurotoxin to insects. ants tend to stay away from areas treated with it.

 

[69GTX]

Coffee grounds, cinnamon are things to deter ants. You can make homemade bait traps like borax and sugar solutions. We were fighting ants for weeks coming into our kitchen. I tried all these methods with "some" success. Finally went out and got 8 Terro liquid ant traps. Placed them outside the house and a couple inside the kitchen. A couple days later and NO ants. Terro's come up on the top list of bait traps time and time again. Inexpensive too. Walmart and other retailers carry them.

 

[JamesBond]

I just had this problem a few weeks ago, but they were infesting under the hood mostly, but I did see a few on the interior. I made a mix of equal parts sugar and hot water (1/4 cup) and maybe a tablespoon of boric acid powder. I put a few drops of the mix in bottle caps and on small pieces of cardboard under the hood and added fresh drops every day. They were all gone in a few days.

 

[pezzy669]

I use the Terro liquid baits at home but they are meant to attract a colony to come eat from them - not really trying to bait more ants to come in even so they may die. Some of the colonies around here I have used 4-5 Terro packs before they started dying off and there were thousands. Also I live in a condo community so I can't exactly just put them down in one spot I park at as I park in various spaces.

My car is quite clean except for some dirt on the rubber mats but I suppose I could take it in for a quick full service cleaning. Don't eat in there so there should not be any food in there and don't really keep empty cups or bottles in there.

I'll give a little bit of cinnamon under the seats a try and see how that goes. Was trying to avoid outside forces and thinking I could just bake the car a few days in the sun.

 

[doitmyself]

Originally Posted by kstanf150
Originally Posted by tahoe_hybrid
that may damage the interior and smell of windex

Oh good lord
That's absurd
Will not


The detail gurus claim to avoid products with ammonia (glass cleaner) because it can damage rubber and/or plastic.

 

[csandste]

If they're sweet eating ants, Terro is wonderful. They will carry it back to kill the nest, but if you only have fifty ants in the car they'd all gather around and eat them selves to death. If my memory is correct it's diatomaceous earth in syrup. Cuts their little guts to shreds.

 

[ammolab]

Originally Posted by csandste
If they're sweet eating ants, Terro is wonderful. They will carry it back to kill the nest, but if you only have fifty ants in the car they'd all gather around and eat them selves to death. If my memory is correct it's diatomaceous earth in syrup. Cuts their little guts to shreds.


The active ingredient in Terro is listed as, Borrax.

 

[Mad_Hatter]

Do you actually know that you have a nest in the car or just a handful of hobo ants? Fwiw it's not unheard of for some ant species to infest warm places like a wall void or circuit panel or switch box... even a car under the right circumstance.

If there's no queen, food source and water they'll die off naturally. Putting Terro (boric acid and a sugar) won't draw in more ants unless a) ants from an outside ant colony are foraging into your car and b) the ants that have taken up residence in your car are somehow still connected to their original colony. Ants, even of the same species, don't play well from one colony to another.

Ant solutions work in one of two ways, they a) attract and kill by using a sugar/protein and poison (like boric acid which acts slowly on the ants digestive system) or they b) repel, like peppermint. You can certainly drown an ant in ammonia/Windex but you could achieve the same result just using water alone. The other option to controlling ants in a "safer" way is to use a pyrethroid based insecticide. But again, ants are "blind"... their world is about scent so spraying something that acts like a repellent should keep them out of your cabin until they can die off naturally.

 

[demarpaint]

Years ago I had them in a work van. I used bait stations, the ants were gone in short order.