Posted: Tue Aug 27, 2019 12:58pm
I’m afraid the answer, short of calling in professional pest control!, appears to be sustained and repeated treatment.
We had a dreadful infestation a little while ago but now appear to have won!
The first step is actually to establish where they are coming in. We had several small invasions around the doors, but dealt with those by ruthless spraying both inside and out all along the skirtings and the external edges of the wall/ground/junction the very minute we saw even one scout. The entrance holes were then sealed with heavy duty silicon - although they can and will, eventually eat through anything.
The more serious infestation we discovered, came from a nest which we can only imagine was within the hollow bricks of the walls. We couldn’t/wouldn’t use the sprays here,because I don’t want to spray the kitchen worktops with this kind of thing. We eventually established that they were coming in through a minute crack between the floor and the wall edge right at the back of the kitchen base units. We ruthlessly sprayed again several times, under the units, clearing up the defeated armies as we went. We then sealed the crack as best we could without actually dismantling the kitchen. Then we sited a couple of the RAID type poison traps which work by them taking it back to their nest, near where they had been entering. So far, we have succeeded.
We tried all the useless green honey trap things and also washing everything with vinegar - which makes life rather pungent. Allegedly the vinegar disrupts the scent trails which they use for moving around once the scouts have reported back. This does work for, in my experience, a very short time, and needs to be repeated often.
So, it’s a battle - and they've got far more troops than you have - so you simply have to be ruthless and single minded!