- How does cinnamon help against ants?
- Use cinnamon against ants
- Alternatives to cinnamon against ants
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If you want to drive ants out of your house or garden with home remedies, cinnamon is the remedy of choice. We explain whether and how cinnamon helps against ants.
Anyone who is looking for a remedy against ants (Formicidae) in the form of home remedies will usually find more or less long lists of strong-smelling herbs or oils that are supposed to drive the ants away successfully. However, these are by no means checked for their effectiveness, but rather there are also a number of substances on such lists whose effect belongs more to the realm of myths and legends. It's different with cinnamon: Its effectiveness as a remedy for problems with ants has been scientifically proven. The result is a clear confirmation of its effectiveness - albeit with a few caveats.
Ants have an excellent sense of smell. It should be at least as pronounced as that of dogs. This is not surprising, after all, the small hymenoptera live almost exclusively in cracks, crevices, dark corridors, burrows and nests. Their eyesight is reduced accordingly and their hearing is limited to the perception of vibrations in the underground. They smell with the feelers, which are equally densely occupied with sensory cells for smelling and touching. Ants can also taste and perceive air currents and temperature with their delicate, flexible feelers.
How does cinnamon help against ants?
Cinnamon acts as a repellent on ants, also known as a deterrent. This is an agent intended to be detected by an unwanted creature and deter that creature from approaching the odor any further. Almost all repellents work with the sense of smell. Since this sense is very highly developed in ants, the use of these remedies is obvious. However, repellents are species-specific. This means that not every species of insect or every species of ant will be repelled by the same repellent to the same extent. Rather, there are species-specific dislikes and preferences when it comes to smells.
InScientific tests have shown that some species of ants were strongly repelled by cinnamon powder and cinnamon oil. The ants tested were black garden ants (Lasius niger), black-headed ants (Tapinoma melanocephalum) and pharaoh ants (Monomorium pharonis). ). All three species tested responded to cinnamon powder or 10% cinnamon oil with a clear avoidance tactic: 75 to 100% of the ants avoided crossing a cinnamon barrier. This made cinnamon much more effective against ants than the baking soda barrier, which hardly deterred pharaoh ants at all.
Unfortunately, these results are by no means universally valid and there are certainly also species of ants that are not impressed by the smell of cinnamon. As long as the effectiveness of this home remedy has not been tested for all ant species relevant to us, private users have no choice but to test for themselves whether cinnamon works as a repellent for the ants present.
Tip: Baking powder as a household remedy is used both as a repellent and as a stomach poison. In order for it to be eaten, however, it must be mixed with sugar. You can read here whether and how baking powder works against ants. If you are looking for an effective way to get rid of ants, you can find out more about our Plantura ant remedy here.
Use cinnamon against ants
Many people know that ants use the pheromone traces of their scouts to find their way to the next food source. It turns out that these "olfactory trails" are very reluctant to be abandoned by social animals. Even if another route to the food source is possible and a repellent makes the route difficult, the path marked with scents will still be chosen. No wonder: Since the ant primarily uses its sense of smell to orientate itself, it cannot "see" that other paths also lead to its goal. Therefore, in order to abandon an ant trail, three steps are necessary.
Overview - Fight Ant Trail with Cinnamon:
- The pheromone trail must be removed. This can be done with lemon vinegar or vinegar essence, for example.
- An approximately 5 cm wide strip of cinnamon powder or 10% cinnamon oil is laid out as a barrier at any access points for the ants.
- Former food sources for the ants must be stowed away as airtight as possible and must not lie around in the open.
In the long run, a household plagued by ants will only have peace if all ant entry points are sealed tightly with silicon, plaster or clay. It should also be mentioned that cinnamon has a very good effect both in the house and apartment as well as in the garden for a certain period of time. However, this evaporates relatively quickly compared to chemical repellents. After a few days, the cinnamon barrier would have to be renewed - unless it had already been removed by the wind earlier. In return, cinnamon can be used without hesitation and indefinitely, as there is no toxicity to humans, animals or the environment.
Cinnamon against ants has the greatest potential of all home remedies - both as an oil and as a powder. However, preventive action and the sealing of living spaces remain unavoidable if an ant plague in the house is to be ended. Cinnamon in the garden can also help against ants. Similar to the apartment, the pheromone traces have to be removed first in order to reliably scare the ants away. You can then spread the cinnamon powder or cinnamon oil in a strip five centimeters wide where you want to keep the ants away - for example at the foot of a raised bed, in front of the patio door or as a circle around a particularly badly infested plant. If you place the barrier directly at the exit of an ant cave, it can even happen that the entire ant colony relocates. Whether cinnamon helps against the species of ant that occurs has to be tested on a case-by-case basis.
Alternatives to cinnamon against ants
If you are looking for an effective ant repellent, you can use our Plantura ant repellent. Like cinnamon, if used correctly, it is harmless to insects, which do not bother us in the garden, but please and are useful. When using biocides, please always observe the application recommendations and read the package insert.
You can find more about fighting ants in our special articles. Here we explain why ants appear in the house and apartment at all, which home remedies can be used against ants and how to fight ants successfully.