The entire family can get involved in making sugar ant hotels. My grown daughter still tells people about how we made these sugar ant hotel traps when she was little, and how well they worked. Just make sure that young children are supervised so as not to eat any borax.

Sugar Ant Hotel
1 cup borax
1 cup sugar
3 cups water
small glass jars, such as small glass artichoke jars
cotton balls
hammer and nail

Mix the dry ingredients in a bowl. Place cotton balls in the bottom of the jars, fill with the dry ingredients, and then fill with water up to 1/2 inch from the top of the jar. Screw on the top. Hammer holes into the top, and place the jars around the kitchen and other places where you see ants. Attracted to the smell of the sugar, the ants will go into the jar through the holes on the top of the jars, and be killed by the water and borax.

This trap will not catch the queen. To kill the queen, you need to give the worker ants a sugar/borax ratio that won’t kill them on their way to the queen’s nest. Blend 1/4 cup of confectioners’ sugar and 1 tabe3spoon borax, and sprinkle along ant trails, but not where children or pets can ingest it.

Adapted from Better Basics for the Home, by Annie B. Bond (Three Rivers Press, 1999).