The Best Ant Traps for Your Kitchen
Updated 2024.07.31. This page contains affiliate links and this site earns from qualifying purchases made through these sponsored links.
Having ants in the kitchen is typically a seasonal problem and they make it difficult, if not impossible, to prepare and store food in a sanitary way.
When you can’t prepare and store your food in a way that keeps pests, and the vectors they carry, at bay, it poses risks to your health and food safety.
There are few things you need to survive more than clean, healthy food, so keeping your food safe from pests like ants is essential to assuring your core needs are met.
To get rid of ants in your kitchen:
1. Put away all open food
Take any food you have out on your counters and put it in a sealed place, like a cabinet or fridge. Clean your counters, floors and stove of crumbs, as these too are food for ants.
This eliminates one of the reasons why ants are entering your kitchen.
2. Keep the sink clean from dishes and standing water
Standing water from dirty dishes in the sink can also attract ants. Commit to doing your dishes right away and wipe up all the water droplets afterwards.
3. Bait and kill them
This is the final step. Once you have taken the above actions to remove the temptation for the ants to enter your kitchen, it’s time to place traps.
When you place baited traps out for ants, the bait kills both the ants you see and the ones you don’t. The ants you see take the bait as “food” and share it with other ants, which kills the colony.
Not all baited ant traps have the same level of effectiveness. Of all the kitchen ant traps we’ve tried, one ant trap stands out as the most effective at keeping ant populations in the kitchen to a minimum.
They work fast, are easy to use and have a snap off opening design, so you don’t need scissors to open and set your traps.
You simply snap off the top of the bait station and set each bait station wherever you have a trail of ants; on floors, along baseboards, under cabinets, on windowsills, by sinks, near entry points or under appliances.
To open your ant traps:
Hold your bait station facing up (photo below) and break off the tab, continuing to hold it up to not spill the bait
Carefully place your bait station flat on a horizontal surface near any signs of ants
Monitor your placements and adjust them as needed, remaining mindful not to spill the bait
Replace the bait stations once the bait is depleted, which may take as little as 2 weeks, or every 3 months to keep ants from returning
To identify the best placements for your ant traps, find out how they are getting into your kitchen by identifying the source. You can find the source of your ants by following their trail back to its origin point.
Once you have found the source point of the ants, place your open ant traps on a horizontal surface right in front of or next to the source.
If you notice a line of ants, place your traps right in the middle of or next to the line.
These traps can return your kitchen to the clean food-preparing sanctuary it was always meant to be.
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