Let’s admit it; ants can be annoying when they are crawling around your house while searching for some food. You sometimes will find an army of ants crawling towards your uncooked rice jar and other foods in your kitchen. Do these ants eat the rice? And if they do, does rice kill ants?
Ants will eat your rice. This is because ants crave sugary substances like sweet fruits and carbohydrates. Rice is a rich source of carbohydrates, and a nearby ant colony will always be on the search for a rice jar.
This shouldn’t raise too much alarm though, as both cooked rice and uncooked rice have been shown to kill ants once they drink water.
Remember, when you get rid of ants, you want to eliminate the queen at the source.
While your rice container may help, getting rid of those tough colonies (like fire ant workers and pharaoh ants) is much harder than using rice.
Can Rice Kill Ants?
Surprisingly, rice can kill ants if they consume it with water.
Dried rice can be a good bait for ants if you want to make them pay for stealing your rice.
The idea behind this phenomenon is that when ants consume dry rice grains and water together, the rice gets soaked in water and absorbs it inside their abdomen.
This phenomenon allows the rice to expand inside their abdomen, killing the ants.
To ensure that ants consume some water after a meal, you can pour some water near the dry rice so that they can drink it while eating your rice.
How do you Stop Ants from Eating Rice?
There are many ways to stop ants from eating your rice.
You can buy an ant killer from the closest store or make your homemade ant killer with the right products.
Alternatively, if you think ants aren’t worth paying for, you can get rid of them using natural ingredients that you can probably find in your kitchen and kill ants for free.
Continue reading the article to find all possible ways to stop ants from eating your rice and other foods.
How Can You Get Rid of Ants Naturally?
When ants invade your house, you must be prepared to eliminate them.
There are natural ways to kill the ants if you’re allergic to chemicals or pesticides.
Here’s how you can get rid of ants and stop them from finding a nice jar of rice to eat in your home
Get Rid of Ants Using Cucumber Slices
Cucumber could be bad news to ants.
There’s something in their chemical composition that removes the fungi that ants love a lot.
You can search near the cracks in your house where ants usually enter from.
Leave some cucumber slices or peels around these cracks. This is a quick but temporary method to get rid of ants.
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Kill Ants with Your Leftover Coffee Grounds
Before throwing away used coffee grounds after having a cup of coffee, remember that they can be used to get rid of ants.
Mix coffee grounds with hot water and pour it over an ant’s nest or sprinkle the coffee grounds around your garden. Either way, this method will save you the trouble.
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Draw lines with a chalk
You cannot kill ants with chalk; however, you can limit their movement by drawing lines with chalk.
Chalk is a powdery substance; ants do not like walking through powdery substances as it blocks their scenting abilities and alters their spiracles.
The best location to draw lines would be around cracks in your home where ants usually come from. You can also draw lines around your front and back doors to ensure no ant comes uninvited.
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Use boiling water and dish soap to kill ants
Ants don’t want you to know that they hate hot water and dish soap.
This is because ants cannot tolerate high temperatures and are allergic to dish soaps.
You can fill a spray bottle with the solution of hot water and dish soap and keep spraying their nest until they’re out of numbers.
You can keep the bottle in your kitchen so that when you see ants searching for a rice grain, you can make them pay on the spot.
Vinegar and hot water to get rid of ants
White vinegar is another affordable product that can help you stop ants from eating your rice and get rid of them for good.
You can mix vinegar with hot water in a 50-50 ratio and pour the solution into a spraying bottle.
The next step would be to spray it over your kitchen countertops or over those spots in your kitchen where ants usually search for food.
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How to Make Your Own Ant Bait?
Ant killers or pest control services can be expensive.
If you don’t want to waste a lot of money to kill those tiny insects, there are ways to make your ant killer at home.
You can make your own ant killer using baking soda and powdered sugar, or you can use Borax and a tablespoon of honey to make the ants pay for stealing your food.
Here’s how to make your own homemade ant killer:
Use Baking Soda and Powdered Sugar to kill ants
A mixture of baking soda and powdered sugars will help you kill ants.
You can bait ants with sugar, as the smell of it attracts them, and baking soda can make them regret eating it.
Baking soda messes up the ant’s digestive system, and it won’t stand for long after consuming it.
You can mix baking soda and powdered sugar in a 50-50 ratio, and three-quarters of a tablespoon will be enough to kill them.
The ideal way would be to search for the nest and put the mixture around it.
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Make your Own Ant Killer with Borax and Honey
When ants are all over your house, it can cost you a lot to call an exterminator and get rid of ants.
However, there is a cheap way to make your ant killer using Borax and kill ants for good.
When ants consume Borax, it messes up their abdomen and kills them slowly. You can buy Borax from your closest supermarket and some honey; that is all you need to start getting rid of ants.
Borax can easily be dissolved in boiled water, and honey can be set in the trap to attract ants, as they love sugary liquids.
The ultimate ant trap!
Follow these steps to make an ant killer using Borax:
- Start with boing a cup of water.
- Pour the boiled water into a cup.
- Take two tablespoons of Borax and mix it with a cup of boiled water.
- Take one tablespoon of honey and mix it with the solution of Borax and boiled water.
- Let the solution cool down.
You can fill this solution in a spray bottle or use bottle caps to fill them with the solution and place them where you can find an army of ants.
Ants will consume it as they are attracted to honey, and the Borax will ensure a slow death for ants.
[amazon box=”B07KTFFCFH”]Other Articles Answering Some Common Ant Questions
When it comes to ants, there are so many questions.
We go into detail answering some of these common questions on our website.
Here are some of those posts: