Borax For Ants: A Simple And Effective Ant Killer

Need a quick and easy way to kill ants, use this Borax recipe! You should mix a half cup of sugar with 1-2 tablespoons of Borax and one and a half cup of water. It works best if the water is warm, and stir and put the mixture out near ants for them to eat.

Having an ant plague at home can be extremely irritating. But, did you know that Borax is a simple and effective ant killer? There are many commercially available ant killers, but few are so effective as Borax.

What Is Borax?

Borax is the common name of disodium tetraborate, sodium tetraborate, or sodium borate. This salt of boric acid and mineral is a boron compound.

Borax is commonly used as a component in enamel glazes, cosmetics, and detergents. Borax is made of sifting crystals that are colorless, but in its powdered form, Borax is white.

This compound happens naturally when seasonal lakes are evaporated repeatedly. Their evaporation produced evaporite deposits where Borax is found.

There are important Borax deposits in different world regions, from the Atacama Desert in Chile, Romania, Tibet, Bolivia, and the Southwestern United States. The main Borax deposits are located in Boron, California; in Searles Lakes, California; and in Turkey.

But it is not necessary to find Borax naturally as it can also be produced synthetically.

How Is Borax Used?

Many different household cleaning and laundry products, some tooth bleaching brands, and even some powdered soap use Borax.

But it also has some other, less known uses. For example, it is now being used as a method of extracting gold in some small mines, mostly in the Philippines. This is unsurprisingly known as the borax method.

Combined with polyvinyl alcohol, borax is also used as a glue. This is normally known as Elmer’s Glue and it is most commonly used in science demonstrations.

In some countries, Borax is used as a food additive (E285). This additive is banned in some countries, including the United States and Thailand. It is also sometimes used as preservative or as a food ingredient because it can add a firm yet rubbery texture to food. This use is mostly used in Asia, mostly in Chinese food: some rice and hand-pulled noodles, and in other recipes.

Borax is also a component in pottery, glass, and ceramics. It is used in enamel glazes. It is also a fire retardant, a skin curing agents for snakes, a buffering agent to control the pH in swimming pools, a taxidermy preservative, among many other uses.

But, Borax is also effective as a killer and preventative agent against pets that are used in areas that are hard (or impossible) to access for more traditional pesticides.

How Does Borax Kill Ants?

If you want to try out Borax and see for yourself how effective it is at eliminating pests, all you will need to do is mix the following ingredients:

• One and a half tablespoon of Borax.
• Half a cup of sugar.
• One and a half cup of warm water.

Then, soak a few cotton balls in the borax-sugar-water mixture. Place the soaked cotton balls in the areas affected by the ant infestation.

The sugar that you have added to the mix will attract the ants to the cotton balls. When the ants take the cotton balls with them to their nests, they will be taken the lethal Borax with them.

If ants are such busy workers, how come they find time to go to all the picnics? – Marie Dressler

If you have any house pets or children in the house, make sure that they do not have access to the areas where the cotton balls are. Lock doors or do the necessary to isolate the areas where you place the cotton balls from children or pets. If you leave the cotton balls in place overnight, you would be given the ants enough time to be attracted to the Borax-laced cotton balls. You will not need to do anything else, just let the Borax do its thing. Then, the following day, pick up the reminding cotton balls and clean the area thoroughly by wiping up the floor to make the area safe again for pets and children.

You might have to repeat the same action for a second night, depending on the size of your ant infestation. But it is rare that you would need to do this more than two nights in a row to solve the problem.

The first time should deal with most of the ants and the second time should just kill them all off.

Does This Method Always Work?

If you do not see a noticeable difference the next morning after leaving the cotton balls out all night, then there is a problem with the mix.

Given that you have followed our instructions to the letter, this lack of success could only mean that the ants are not attracted to sugar. Believe it or not, not all ants are attracted to sugar. Some have a taste for savory things. It might be worth adding some peanut butter in the mix instead of sugar. If you do not want to wait and need to get rid of the ants as soon as possible, just do two different mixtures at the same time: one with sugar and one with peanut butter.

“Ants are good citizens: they place group interests first.” — Clarence Day

Either the sugar or the peanut mixture will work, and you will get rid of your ant problem at least for some time. Unfortunately, using Borax will not guarantee that the ants will stay away forever. If they happen to come back sometime later, just do the mixture again to get rid of them.