Ant hills are made up of piles of sand and soil that ants remove as they dig. These piles typically make the entrance and exit to the underground colony rather than actually housing the ants. Although a few ants can be good for your lawn, millions of them can become a problem for your landscaping and your home. This can lead to you needing ant eradication experts.

Why your yard is full of ant hills

Once ant hills start popping up on your lawn, it’s safe to assume that there is a thriving ant colony just under the surface of your lawn, and it’s growing by the day.

Ants are looking for a few essential resources when choosing a location to establish a colony, including:

  • A water source: standing water, bird baths, fountains, leaky pipes

  • Food source: fruit, sap, insect eggs, and honeydew produced by aphids

  • Their preferred soil conditions: dry, loose, well-drained, sandy soil that gets hours of direct sunlight throughout the day

Not all ants build ant hills. The main types of ants that you’ll find building ant hills on your lawn are Argentine ants, fire ants, and Texas leaf cutter ants.

Ways to get rid of ant hills

To get rid of ant hills for good, you have to address the real problem: the ant colony. Simply knocking over all the ant hills you can find will not get rid of the colony of ants that built the hill in the first place. To stop hills from popping up again, you have to destroy the queen—or queens—of the ant colony, which is no easy task. The best approach depends on the species of ants because they each have varying food and habitat preferences. The ant control experts at Terminix can identify the ant species and come up with a plan to tackle the problems. Strategies might include:

Professional pest control

Terminix ant control technicians have extensive experience dealing with all different types of ant species and infestations of all sizes. If you want to take a direct, comprehensive approach to getting rid of ant hills in your yard, professional ant control is the way to go. Our treatments use a combination of baits and non-repellent insecticides to take advantage of the “transfer effect”. As a social pest, worker ants will carry the insecticide back to the colony and eventually kill the queen.

Borax

Borax is a salt that is toxic to ants. When they ingest it, it can disrupt their digestive system, eventually causing death. Placing borax mixed with sugar and water around ant hills may kill some ants, but you never know how many have been left alive to continue rebuilding the colony.

Boiling water

Boiling water and pouring it into the ant hills may kill any ants that are living directly beneath the hill. It can be an effective treatment if you have one or two ant hills, but you will have to repeat the process multiple times in an attempt to eliminate the entire colony, which can be time-consuming. Some ant species create colonies that are several feet below the surface and the boiled water won’t make it down the entire colony fast enough before cooling off to eliminate it.

Boric acid

Boric acid is a mixture of borax and other naturally occurring minerals. Adding hydrogen or another acid to borax creates boric acid. It’s used in the same way as borax to kill ants, but is not always effective.

Carbonated water

Using carbonated water or club soda to kill fire ants is a DIY method you may have heard of, but it hasn’t proven to be very effective. The theory is that the carbon dioxide will suffocate ants, however, the carbon dioxide from the club soda isn’t sufficient to replace the air and kill the entire colony. If anything, the club soda might make the colony move locations to avoid disturbance, but that may not help you much if you have a big yard.

What happens when you destroy an ant hill?

When you destroy an ant hill, all you’ve done is eliminate one entrance to the ant colony underneath the surface. The ants will find other ways to enter and exit their home and eventually build a new hill to replace the one that you destroyed. Plus there are many more insects inside the nest than are outside the nest, so those colony members will simply dig their way out and create a new opening. That’s why it’s so important to address the big picture—the colony as a whole. It can be difficult to fully get rid of ant hills because where there is a hill, there are thousands and even millions of ants to accompany it.

Prevent ants outside your home

The best way to prevent ants is to keep the turf healthy. Ants prefer dry, well-drained soil, so a lush, well-hydrated lawn is less likely to attract large ant populations. Keep your lawn mowed to a height of three inches, and water grass deeply to ensure a healthy root system. Yearly fertilization can also help keep the grass healthy. Ant control treatments can also help eliminate small populations before they grow out of control.

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