How to Get Rid of Sugar Ants in Your Driveway 

Pavement ants, often called sugar ants, are quite a nuisance. If you have cracks in your driveway, you’ll probably notice swarms of these pests hanging out in there. The real problem, however, arises when the ants begin to thrive so much outside your property that they begin to find ways into your property through the tiniest holes and gaps.

If you let your pavement ant problem go uncontrolled, it’s only a matter of time before your outside ant problem becomes a serious inside ant problem. So, to save yourself the headache and annoyance of seeing a trail of ants carrying crumbs across your kitchen floor, it’s best to practice preventative pest control and stop them before they get inside at all.

Why Are Sugar Ants Swarming My Driveway Cracks?

Ants like soil that is soft, dry, and nicely aerated. For most of us, that’s the exact type of soil the paving company prepared underneath your concrete driveway or paving slabs. The warmth present underneath your driveway also passes deep into the earth, and ants like that too.

In most cases, the cracks of an average driveway give them the perfect entry/exit points to leave home and go searching for food. If ants are really thriving in your driveway, one group within a colony might even break away from the nest to build a second one, and your problem will grow at an even faster rate.

Each colony holds up to 5,000 ants. Where there is more than one queen, a single colony can reach an astonishing 30,000. If you let the problem go uncontrolled, it won’t take long for all the cracks in your driveway to be swarming with sugar ants. All these ants, obviously, will be out looking for food and they’ll gradually make their way into your garage and other parts of your home.

Top 4 Safe Ways to Get Rid Of Sugar Ants At The Source

If ants have made a home under or around your driveway, the best thing you can do to prevent them from getting inside your home is to look for the colony and destroy the ants at the source. This can be more difficult than you think, since the ants may travel a far ways unseen underneath the concrete before emerging through its cracks.

1) Get Rid of Sugar Ants with Boiling Water

However, when you can locate the colony or at least a large portion of it, a simple pot of boiling water is enough to destroy it. Pour it onto the colony a few different times on a few different days (some of the ants will always be away from the nest) and you should be able to destroy all of them.

2) Get Rid of Sugar Ants with Salt

Another solution is to pour salt onto the colony, which will dehydrate the ants and cause them to go in search of water. They will drink so much that they will literally burst. If you can’t locate the colony, putting salt into your driveway cracks will stop them from emerging there, but they will find somewhere else to do so. Find that location and continue to try and trace them back to the colony, if you can find it.

3) Get Rid of Sugar Ants with Coffee

In cases where you absolutely can’t find the nest, here’s a trick: pour coffee around the area. For some reason, coffee throw’s off an ant’s sense of direction and, while it won’t instantly kill them, it will prevent them from returning to the nest. Repeatedly doing so will make all the worker bees (food collectors) get lost and the colony will eventually starve.

4) Get Rid of Sugar Ants with Vinegar and Baking Soda

Take some baking soda and sprinkle over the cracks where ants are swarming about 1/4 ro 1/2 inch thick. Then take plain white vinegar and pour over the baking soda. This will cause a reaction and a lot of bubbling killing the ants safely and naturally, not hurting the environment around you , nor creating dangerous fumes.