It’s the time of year when we get packs of foraging ants invading households looking for food. They’re stocking up either ready for the winter or before the nest splits and a new colony is formed, marching off into the sunset to find a new place to live.

To be certain you don’t get invaded by ants you need to ensure two things. You don’t leave any food out and you kill off these foraging parties before they can report back to HQ. Once they have found a source of food and have told the colony, that’s it, you’re in trouble.

I don’t like killing anything for no good reason, but ants in your pants is a pretty good reason to me. But what to use to do the ghastly deed. Well, long term you can get all sorts of ant powders and stuff they drag into the colony, unwittingly poisoning the nest. But the little foraging parties need a quick remedy. I used to use fly spray. It’s pretty quick acting, but we ran out of spray the other day and I needed to find an alternative. I chose Astonish mould and mildew remover. What an eye opener that was. Instant death for ants and cleans away mould and mildew at the same time. Two for the price of one, what more could you ask for in this age of austerity?

Tom Kane (c) 2016