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I have a pretty bad ant infestation. I think the little critters are Argentine ants. I've used a couple of bottles of Terro (I usually put down about a quarter bottle at a time). It does slow them down, but they come right back not after not too long.

I have been thinking about using an aerosol insecticide. The stuff I have has imiprothrin and cypermethrin as active ingredients. The are supposed to be good enough that I can just spray on their trails, and they'll die if they walk over the sprayed areas.

The problem is the location of the trail. They're coming out from a space between the baseboard heater and the wall's outer finish.

Can I spray the baseboard heater? I'm not worried about fires, but I'd really hate for the insecticide to start outgassing when the heaters get turned on this winter.

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    Don't use spay. It never works.
    – Edwin
    Jul 13, 2014 at 15:31

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You should lay a bait down. I recommend Advion, which is a product from DuPont or MaxForce, which uses fipronil. You can do a search on Amazon or a similar site for "Advion ant" or "MaxForce ant". The bait comes in a plunger that you can use to apply in small places. Find out where they are trailing and put a few drops down. You can put the drops on paper if you are worried about your finish. Every day (or couple of hours if you have a bad infestation) check to see if the bait's gone and reapply. It may take a couple of weeks to kill them all.

As far as Terro goes, I haven't had much luck with it either. The attractant in Terro's all sugar-based from my understanding. The ants may be feeding on Protein now.

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    Good idea. I used the roach Advion when I moved into a different apartment last year. The ants definitely eat the Terro by the hundreds. Argentine ants can have hundreds of queens in a colony! :(
    – nomen
    Jul 13, 2014 at 16:29
  • The fipronil was good, but the stuff I got is sensitive to drying out apparently, and then they can't eat anymore. Pretty wasteful, unless you just use very tiny beads, I mean small. I'm in a temperate climate... It definitely helps fight our super colony, but hasn't eliminated it by a long shot. Their interest also seems to wax and wane, very strange. I ended making my own little foil "cups" for this stuff, because it is nasty, and a PITA to clean up dried little globs of it...
    – NOTjust -- user4304
    Mar 17, 2021 at 17:02

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