Terro PreFilled Liquid Ant Killer II Baits, 3-Packs of 6 Baits Each

I would give this 10 stars if I could. It saved me from calling an exterminator.Monday PM: Came home from work to find about 20 or 25 carpenter ants swarming my kitchen counter because I'd mistakenly left a small amount of sugar water (for hummingbird feeder) on the counter. I reined in my impulse to kill them all, ASAP, and instead put out some old Terro baits that had been sitting under the kitchen sink for probably a few years and been forgotten. They were unopened, but had leaked onto the cardboard packaging. I put 4 of them out anyway (way more than what was needed.). The ants began feeding from them very quickly and I left them alone overnight. (I did also see for the first time where the ants had come in, from 2 tiny holes they drilled through trim in a corner above the back kitchen door.Tuesday AM: Got up to still see ants around the baits, but fewer in number. Left them alone and went to work.Tuesday PM: No ants seen when I got home. What was even better was this. About a week or so prior, I had begun hearing a crinkly sound under the window of my upstairs bathroom, and I was pretty sure there was a carpenter ant nest there since a few years earlier I'd noticed some dead insect parts that fell through the ceiling of my sunroom, which is directly below that upstairs bathroom. I had caulked a crack but done nothing else. (Me bad.) Anyway, I was going to call an exterminator and envisioned them drilling holes through the wallpaper in the bathroom to dust the ants.But after I left the ant baits in the kitchen, the crinkly noise I'd been hearing upstairs completely stopped! Evidently, the ants had been traveling from the upstairs bathroom down to the kitchen area. This might explain why I could not find any ant trails coming into the house from outside...they were already inside.Wed: No ants seen, day or night. Kept the traps in place.Thurs AM: I did see one single carpenter ant, crawling very slowly in the direction of the little entry holes they drilled above the kitchen door. I am hoping it consumed some of the poison and was going to share it with any remaining survivors.This stuff works great I was so amazed it not only dealt with my kitchen ant problem very quickly, but also ants migrating from my bathroom. It saved me a lot of money. My only quibble is that the stuff does leak from even a sealed container, for some reason. I would recommend placing the baits on small index cards or just a piece of paper to catch any possible leakage, and to store the entire package in a cardboard box, as a precaution.UPDATE June 2018: 1-2 weeks after doing the original bait and killing the bulk of the nest, I am still finding dead or dying ants around my house..interestingly, not where i put the bait. Apparently these are leftover ants. I'm glad they're being killed, but it's a pain find dead ants around every day and since my cat has been known to eat insects, dead or alive, I have to pick them up quickly before the cat does.I have also noticed a few perfectly healthy looking ants in the house that show no interest in the bait, even when i put it near them. So that's a little discouraging. On the whole still satisfied with Terro performance even if it hasn't been 100%.

Worked perfectly

Like clockwork, ants arrive in my kitchen about the same time as daffodils bloom my garden. These are small black chemical ants—the kind that smell like an acrid chemical when squashed. Time for the Terro! It really works! Not fast, mind you. One must wait for ants to imbibe and then tell the rest of the colony about their find. The ants can’t seem to get enough of this stuff. They really love it. They then take it back to their colony for total destruction. The Ants are gone for the entire summer with just one treatment. Easy to use as well. I place one container at the bottom of my kitchen trash can, then insert the plastic garbage bag. The ants never make it into my garbage—they get hijacked by the Terro. Fantastic product.

No ant control strategy is going to be perfect, and I expect results may vary according to climate and species. For me, at least, these have been an effective tool in defending against Argentine ants in a dry, warm climate... much better than sprayed poisons, powders, etc.Deploying these is the only part that seems a bit tricky. You need to cut off a part of the plastic that inevitably may have traces of the poisoned bait, so it's best to use a utility scissors you won't use to cut food packaging, for example, or anything you might touch later. The cutting process is best done over a trash can to begin with, because that small piece of plastic will usually go flying when you snip it.Trap placement strategy may vary depending on your location and climate. Although the liquid bait does hold up very well in hot, dry climate, in my experience they haven't done so well when exposed to direct rainfall. In general I have found it best to place traps within an inch of any existing ant trail where foot traffic or other activity won't disturb, then wait 24-48 hours for the ants to empty the bait or disappear, whichever comes first. One trap per active trail seems to be sufficient.If the ants seem to increase in the first day or so don't worry - all part of the plan. Follow the instructions and keep other temptations away (crumbs, water, etc.), and it should eliminate your ants within a day or two.For best long term management, periodically inspect the areas where you have seen ants before, and if you see new ant trails it probably means a new colony with a new queen - just deploy a new trap at that time. I don't recommend placing these defensively where no ants are seen, because once you do eliminate a colony they seem to stay away for a good long while.I think the trap design could be a bit better, and deployment advice by climate and species might have been nice. You have to experiment and learn by trial and error a bit, hence 4 stars.Overall this is the best of many solutions I have tried. Definitely try this instead of sprayed poisons which just stress a colony into dividing and may increase your problems in the long run.