I had some very tiny ones actually walk the threads of a sealed peanut butter jar lid to get into it. I, of course, found this after I had eaten the sandwich. Extra protein that day, I suppose.
Anyway, Terro liquid ant bait has worked very reliably for me on ants like these. It is essentially a borax and sugar mixture that the ants take into their crop and return it to the nest. Eventually they feed it to the queen, stopping the flow of eggs. The stuff in the white houses usually kills them too quickly -- you want them to live and give it to the other ants in the colony.
One caveat here is that, for some types of ants (Pharaoh), their colony will splinter if it is stressed. So one colony may turn into many colonies, each with a queen, at the first sign of danger. Using liquid baits on these types of ants will actually make your problem worse.
If you go with Terro, resist the urge to do anything to the ants while they are going to town on the bait. It's going to look bad, but they need to return to the colony.
Another solution, if you want to find all of the open spaces in your house, is to puff diatomaceous earth into these spaces. It's pulverized diatoms and looks and feels like talcum powder to humans. To insects, though, it is like walking across glass and acts as a mechanical insecticide.
Both of these options are relatively non-toxic to humans and pets.
Terro has worked well for me on the east coast, but was pretty unimpressive in southern California. I assumed it was probably the decentralized Argentine megacolony thing, but we could conceivably have had splintering colonies. The only things that sort of worked were physical barriers and tightly sealing all our food. We even had an incident with a peanut butter jar, though making sure to screw the lid down seems to have prevented repeats. It was an old, porous house, so really blocking them was tough, and we never fully succeeded. We were convinced we had multiple colonies inside our walls.
One trick with Terro: the liquid can be messy if you're not careful. Honestly it seems to wander out: maybe ants are tracking it out? Anyway, it helps to sit the thing inside a ziploc bag, with a bridge of paper towel or something to help the ants find it. It makes cleanup way easier.
It's also possible that the formula they used has changed -- my bottles are several years old now.
The stuff that I used was a small bottle with waxed cardboard "targets" to place it on. You can use waxed paper as well, and I've never had a problem with it running out onto the floor.
That is fascinating. Growing up we called these sugar ants or kitchen ants. I can't read the article but I assume this is similar.
Do you know why they are averse to diatomaceous earth? They are so small I would not have thought they would experience a tactile aversion to a material. Nature is so neat.
Edit: I see now. It's not an aversion. It sticks to them and get into their joints. Interesting.
Yes, the powder cuts their exoskeleton and they perish from dehydration. It sounds like an awful way to go, but I'll do it if that's what it takes to keep them out of my kitchen.
As for diatomaceous earth, it works best in dry places. If it gets wet they can walk right over it without issue, or it will just wash away in the rain. It's also an ingredient in toothpaste and is included in animal feed to allegedly kill parasites. The research on that seems to be propped up by those invested in selling the stuff, though, so take that with a grain of salt.
Nature is really quite incredible. This blew my mind when I saw it, and it unravels a lot of the mystery behind ant locomotion: https://i.imgur.com/7Zh6Im5.gif -- It's so simple, but it works amazingly well.
Anyway, Terro liquid ant bait has worked very reliably for me on ants like these. It is essentially a borax and sugar mixture that the ants take into their crop and return it to the nest. Eventually they feed it to the queen, stopping the flow of eggs. The stuff in the white houses usually kills them too quickly -- you want them to live and give it to the other ants in the colony.
One caveat here is that, for some types of ants (Pharaoh), their colony will splinter if it is stressed. So one colony may turn into many colonies, each with a queen, at the first sign of danger. Using liquid baits on these types of ants will actually make your problem worse.
If you go with Terro, resist the urge to do anything to the ants while they are going to town on the bait. It's going to look bad, but they need to return to the colony.
Another solution, if you want to find all of the open spaces in your house, is to puff diatomaceous earth into these spaces. It's pulverized diatoms and looks and feels like talcum powder to humans. To insects, though, it is like walking across glass and acts as a mechanical insecticide.
Both of these options are relatively non-toxic to humans and pets.