When this subject comes up, I like to share from my experience, but to the best of my knowledge, not too many follow my example. I don't know why, maybe because this is a bit unconventional. Bug killer seems to be believable, this does not. But this works.
We had inside household birds (several of them) and ants at the same time. We had to be careful what we used to kill the ants, and mostly we found nothing, because virtually everything could have killed the birds, especially spray arrisols. We also took the magazine "Bird Talk." In Bird Talk magazine once, there was a little snippet article, almost no noticeable, about how to get rid of ants. We followed the suggestion and we've never had any kind of ant problem again.
The magazine suggested using dried molasses, you know, the feed supplement used for feeding cattle and deer. It has to be the dried stuff, that comes in a bag, NOT the wet stuff you get from a bottle.
Dried molasses is safe to eat by humans (I've tried it myself), pets, and especially.... birds, but deadly to ants. Why?
The ants carry the dried molasses back to their hive, or den, or cave, or home, or whatever it is. There they consume it, including the queen. Ants are exo-skelletin (meaning the outer shell is their bone structure, and it has no flexibility to it. The ants eat the dried molasses, it expands inside them, their exo-skelletin cannot expand, and they blow up killing them ... including the queen.
Give them 2 days, they the entire colony is dead.
Leave some in a plastic soda bottle cap, or a plastic milk bottle cap in the path were you see the ants. They'll carry it back home. Sprinkle it on top of an ant hill. Next day, ants are gone! Sprinkle it around the foundation of your house, and you'll never have ants inside. A couple times a year, sprinkle it over your lawn (like fertlizer) and you'll never have ants anywhere in your yard. It works. I've been doing this for over 20 years now.
The only problem is, finding it. It's not very common, and I've found that even a lot of feed stores don't carry it either. I found old fashioned feed elevators are the best place to find it, and doing a search on the internet, it can be shipped anywhere
The other problem.... it usually comes in 50 pound bags. Remember, this is livestock feed supplement! I keep it stocked at home all the time in sealed containers in the garage. Moisture will cause it to clump up. But only direct contact with water will make it swell. So, even it clumps up, it crumbles easily.
Sprinkle it around your yard, and it smell incredible sweet! Bird can eat it, livestock can eat it, humans can eat it, mice, squirrels, anything ... except bugs with hard outer shells.. like ants.
Did I say, it tastes good to. Not my most favorite snack, but it does taste good! And smells good too!
Edit:
If you ask any farmer who has livestock and uses molasses as a feed supplement, if they have ants around their livestock feeding troughs, they will stop and think for a moment, scratch their heads, and say, "Well, now that you ask... no!" You would think that a horse or cow feeder would attract a lot of ants ... wouldn't you?
