Re-fillable ant bait station

thingiverse

After taking the easy way out and downloading a design for last spring's problem, I printed and used the ant trap / bait station by nobeer. It's a quality design concept, but I found the threads on it far too brittle and the design wound up not very re-usable. So I popped open solidworks, and whipped up my own version of their idea (so, not a true "remix", this was re-modelled from the ground up), using M48x3 threads with blunt thread terminations so it is very easy to engage without cross threading, and is easily "done up" without risk of over-tightening. Made the holes a bit bigger as well. The original was fine for the small city household types, but the larger holes here can be used for the larger carpenter ant varieties we see at the cabin as well. Maybe too big, but the main goal here is to keep my daughters peanut allergy friend away from the bait inside, and, to that end, it does the job. For bait, search for Boric Acid Ant Bait and look for an article posted on sfgate. That, with for my use, double the boric acid strength listed (I leave the boric acid but half the peanut butter & jelly). That has worked well for us with the ants we get here, but some varieties may be more sensitive and pheromone mark it as toxic for the rest of the colony to avoid. So, if the ants stop going to the trap without dying off, wash it clean, and mix your bait back to the 2% solution listed in the article. It does take weeks to kill off the colonies, but this type of treatment has near always worked for us, at least with the smaller household city ants.