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NEW GROUND
A better way to use boric acid bait-it even beats FIRE ants! .:II iant black carpenter vations may be, new research a:8 ants, tiny ghost ants, on the effects of boric acid
yellowish pharoah antsthey can all be a major nuisance when they decide to invade your home, Those red imported fire ants can really make life miserable for folks in the southern states they've invaded, And ants will even terrorsome by entomologists John Klotz, Ph.D. and Les Greenberg, Ph.D., of the University of California at Riverside may provide the answer. Boric acid in one form or another has been used to control ants for decades, but plains that if you use a lower dose, more ants will eat the bait and those ants will live long enough to take some of it back to the nest to feed other ants and the queenwhich is how you destroy an entire colony. So far, he explains, his low-dose bait has completely eliminated colonies of Florida carpenter ants, Argentine ants, pharoah ants, ghost ants, and even the dreaded Make Your Own Long-term Ant Control Bait: 1. Start by making a 1 % boric acid (available at any drugstore) and 20% sugar solution by thoroughly dissolving 1 teaspoon of boric acid and 6 tablespoons of sugar in 2 cups of water. Do this in a clear jar so you can see when all the boric acid crystals are dissolved. Then soak some cotton balls in this bait solution.

ize your" garden-by guarding pest aphids feeding on your crops. (These ants have learned to drive away beneficial insects that would otherwise feed on the aphids, so that the ants can "milk" the pests for their sweet honeydew,) Well, whatever your personal ant aggraI

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Dr. Klotz has discovered that most commercial products contain too much boric acid for good long-term control. Those "high dose" products (generally containing a 5%
red imported fire ant---':-in the lab, at least. "This bait has worked very well against fire ants in a laboratory setting," explains Dr. Klotz, who adds "now we need to in field

to 17%solution) willkill some verify its effectiveness conditions. " ants quickly, but Dr. Klotz ex-

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ORGANIC GARDENING

2. Make bait dispensers out of some old plastic margarine tubs with lids. Punch holes in them so the ants can get inside, then put the soaked cotton balls into the containers, and cover them with the lids so the bait won't dry out. 3. Place the bait containers wherever you see ants. 4. Clean the con tainers and freshen up the bait solution at least once a week. 5. Be patient! Let those worker ants continually carry boric acid back to feed the ants in their nest. 6. After a few weeks, reduce the boric acid content even further-to V,%-and use that for long, long-term con trol. Dr. Klotz explains that using "a very low dose makes it more likely that surviving ants will continue eating the bait and taking it back to the nest.

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