Confused By Ants/Flying Ants????

[Vasquoy]

I know there are millions of questions on ants/flying ants but i'm confused.

*In my first year in my house I had no ants.
*Two years ago a pile of flying ants came in the bathroom window and then next spring I had a few ants running up the side of the bath towards the window - I tried a bait trap but they never went near it
*Today, a HUGE amount of flying ants and normal ants have appeared from under my bath - I am hoovering them up as quickly as I can!

Now what's confusing me is that I live on the first floor - the ants are in the bathroom under the bath and until today have never ventured out of the bathroom.

WHAT ARE THEY EATING???? And what is it about my bathroom that makes it a nice place to nest?????

[CheekyChops]

I don't know but a few years ago I had flying ant things in the space under my cooker, they kept flying out but were very weak and kept dying all over the kitchen floor.

My dad pulled the bottom off and cleaned it all out, the next day they were back! I have no idea where they were hiding when he cleaned it out or where they came from.

[tiggerwoo]

I have same problem every year. They come in around the back door. Had a consevatory built on the back of the house and they still come fom exactly the same space..obviously there is a nest under the house...I have tried everything but nothing seems to eliminate them. Have been fighting them for a couple of weeks now and it's driving me mad. They are horrible things.

[Vasquoy]

Aren't they just? I think they're under the floorboards under my bath so there's no getting rid of them. I must admit I don't mind the one or two ants that scurry along my bath in the spring (Cillit Bang deals with them most efficiently) but when I came home yesterday and found them all over the bathroom and then into my bedroom as well. Yuck!!!! All gone now but then the weather has done a 360 from boiliong yesterday to raining today.

I just can't understand why my bathroom is a nice place to live when there is a perfectly good garden and a perfectly nice kitchen (with food) next door!!!!

[nightmare]

You are all vile myrmecophobes !
What's wrong with ants ? I find them fascinating.

That should set the cat among the pigeons

[Vasquoy]

I have no problem with them - I just don't want lots of them in my house in the same way I don't want cockroaches, mice, rats, spiders, tigers, cows, turtles, rabbits, ponies, elephants and every other creature in great number in my house.

One or two would be fine - I live in great harmony with a family of woodlice, the odd mouse and a couple buckets of spiders, but if they were to start multiplying the way the ants have I would have a problem with that too.

Cat now removed from pigeons.

[kassiopeia]

I've never been so freaked out by insects in all my life!
My back door was open today and within five minutes there was a swarm of the big horrible things.

Now I feel the same, I don't mind a few of the crawly variety. I wouldn't let my boyfriend kill them when there were loads doing their little marching thing in and out of his kitchen but this was a SWARM!! It was like something out of a film.

There wasn't just the flying ones though, the normal kind had got in on the action too. I completely freaked, threw a load of floor cleaner on them (because I didn't know what else to do!), ran to the shop and got some fly spray then sprayed and shut the door. I'm currently locked in my living room (newly named the panic room!) and dare not enter the kitchen.

Think I'll wait for my much braver sister to arrive!

[Vasquoy]

They are the freakiest things - I was infested with both the flying and the normal kind for two years. Luckily this year they seem to have disappeared - we sprayed the area they were coming in through on a daily basis even if there was no sign of them all through the summer and autumn and it seems to have done the trick!

The sprays you get from B&Q seem to work but those traps and stuff were next to useless! Cillit Bang was good too!