Does Vinegar Kill Ants?

We’ve made our way to March but in many ways, it may as well be December. It’s cold. It’s snowing. We’re still at the mercy of winter. Spring is coming but it certainly isn’t here yet. So where are these ants coming from? Why are you seeing ants in the winter months and how can they be treated?

Ants in the wintertime are common – we’ll get into why in a moment – and while spraying some insecticide on a colony of ants may seem reasonable in the summer months when you can open all the windows and head to the beach while you wait for them all to perish. Spraying all those harsh chemicals indoors, with closed windows, during a pandemic when most of us are more concerned and aware about our health than ever before, seems a little less appealing. 

This could be the reason we’ve been fielding questions like “does vinegar kill ants” more this time of year. The answer may surprise you, but before you grab that bottle of apple cider or white vinegar let’s talk effective pest control. 

Where did the ants come from in the first place?

It’s winter, shouldn’t all the ants be dead or hiding or something? Well, no. Ants do not hibernate and if all the ants died every winter, where would the new ants come from each year. During the winter months, ants adapt. Ants can and will drop their body temperatures, slow down their metabolism and find a warm, safe, place to wait out the cold. 

If you are seeing ants in your home, more than the occasional few, then chances are they are hunkered down and nesting in your walls. You heard that right, the ants are probably nesting in your wall. But what does that mean? Is it bad?

Not as bad as you might think. Unlike mice, or other larger critters who can die in the walls and stink up the whole place – ants in the way cause no serious long-term inconvenience. The real issue with ants in the wall is that they can be harder to treat effectively. 

Ant Colony 101 

The reason why it is more difficult to treat is that the colony is protected within your wall. You see, the ants you see scurrying around your kitchen, the same ones you want to douse with vinegar, are worker ants. Similar to worker bees these ants are created to work. They are sent out of the colony to find food sources. When they find these food sources they will eat the food, walk back home and vomit it up all over the place. 

Sounds disgusting right? Hardly, the other ants will rush over and chow down on the worker ant’s regurgitation and move on with their day. The issue is if you were to spray vinegar, or any pest killer on the ants scurrying around on your kitchen floor and they die on contact, the colony will be none the worse off. They will simply create more worker ants and send them out to collect the colony’s vomit meals. 

So does vinegar work to kill ants?

By now, I hope you can see where we’re going with this. Vinegar will kill ants. So the answer is yes. If you have a collection of ants where you don’t want them and you spray those ants with vinegar they will drown and die. 

However; if you have a collection of ants in your kitchen, bathroom, or anywhere and you spray them with vinegar, and they die, the larger problem will be none the better. If your goal is to kill all the ants, and not just a few of the workers – vinegar is NOT your best option. 

What is the best option then?

If you have a colony in your home, or on your property, the most effective way to eliminate them is with a slow-acting treatment. We want the worker ant to find and consume the product, and NOT die right away. Instead, we want those worker ants to bring back the product, vomit it up everywhere, and then in effect poison the whole colony, with the ultimate goal being to neutralize the queen. 

There are some decent products on the market we’d be happy to help you decide on one during a free phone consultation at (201)989-1474. And if you’d rather have the experts step in, ants are one of Kapture’s many specialties. And to date, we’ve never met a queen we couldn’t slay.