De-antify my electric kettle
March 6, 2024 4:29 PM   Subscribe

Little sugar ants moved into the base and heating element of my electric kettle (link to manufacturer). How do I get rid of them?

It's the time of year when sugar ants are coming into the house. I cleaned up the obvious routes and clusters and put out some Terro liquid ant traps, but can't figure out how to remove the colony or nest from the base/inside part of the kettle.

The ants aren't in the basin/water part of the kettle, but living, apparently, in the part where the kettle sits on the base. When I saw the infestation, I brought the kettle and base outside to a covered deck area and left it there for a few days. I brought in inside a few days later and heated up some water and a bunch of ants appeared so I brought it back outside for several more days. Just now I brought it back inside, set on a plate, and turned it on. Tons of ants. It's pretty gross! (The kettle and residents are back outside now, with the kettle far away from the ants in hopes of, I don't know, tricking them into not going back.)

I can see some small screws on the base of the kettle, but I am hoping there's some clever way of removing them/luring them out without disassembling this small appliance. I guess I could keep heating it and hope they flee in a few rounds? That would be an annoying way to do it and I'm worried they would be lured back in eventually by whatever is so attractive to them in there. Throwing it out and replacing it seems wasteful since it otherwise functions.

Any clever ideas here?
posted by bluedaisy to Home & Garden (10 answers total) 2 users marked this as a favorite
 
Best answer: Oh my gosh, this exact thing happened to me! Yes, they will flee every time you warm it up, but that is a horrifying experience to have each morning. I couldn't handle the idea that they were colonizing in there; it just grossed me out. I ended up warming it to get as many out as possible, then drying it all and putting the base and the kettle in separate big ziplock bags and putting them in the freezer for 3-4 days. Then I took them out and was able to shake out all the dead ants into the trash can.

By the time I started using the kettle again after freezer quarantine, we'd gotten a handle on the situation with traps and everything, so they didn't come back to the warm cozy spots in the kettle. However, I think you could put the kettle+base in the fridge after your daily use or even just move it someplace not on the counter where the ants are less likely to wander so they don't find it again.
posted by luzdeluna at 5:01 PM on March 6, 2024 [6 favorites]


Best answer: I took double sided tape and made a square on my counter around the kettle. Make sure the cord isn't dragging so they can't use that as a bridge. Then vacuum out the base and rinse anything rinsable. The ants don't like to cross the tape. I had this exact same problem and this solution worked for me.
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 5:15 PM on March 6, 2024 [2 favorites]


Best answer: It should be pretty easy to pull the base apart (barring the use of weird proprietary screw heads, which is a distinct possibility). Clean it out well and spray some surface spray inside it, then reassemble when dry. You'll never have to worry about ants in there again.
posted by dg at 5:21 PM on March 6, 2024


Ants follow pheromone trails and not all cleaning products will remove that trail. According to this page Simply sweeping and mopping your floors won’t help to eliminate the scent trail that ants leave behind. Instead, mix up vinegar and water and spray areas where ants have been. Another recommendation is to use an Ammonia based cleaner to clean up the pheromone trail. Bleach won’t do anything to get rid of these trails. Getting rid of these pheromone trails will help to stop calling out to new ants to keep trailing into the food source. It will stop the trail, but doesn’t get rid of the ants.

Cleaning the pheromone trail will only stop the ants from going to the kettle so you'll also want to use ant traps.
posted by ashbury at 6:04 PM on March 6, 2024 [2 favorites]


Spray or lay down crystals outside your house as well. You have to do that twice a year, but it will help stop them.
posted by soelo at 5:39 AM on March 7, 2024


Borax around the perimeter of your house works.
posted by terrapin at 5:52 AM on March 7, 2024


Best answer: can't figure out how to remove the colony or nest from the base/inside part of the kettle.

Put the kettle bae in the freezer for a day or two. It won't remove them but it will kill the colony.
posted by kdar at 7:24 AM on March 7, 2024


You have an ant nest somewhere and the kettle is their water source. They might not be living in the kettle, just sneaking in to get water. Or heck they could be living in there. If they're living in there, know that there are tons of little baby ant maggots in there too.

I had this happen in my kettle a few years ago and I patiently followed the ants around the kitchen (they were eating cat food and sneaking into the back of the trash can to eat garbage). I found a nest of them INSIDE a bar of soap on a shelf, with HUNDREDS of little larvae maggots, barf barf barf.

The only bait that kills ants reliably is Terro brand clear liquid ant baits, don't even bother with others.
posted by nouvelle-personne at 7:53 AM on March 7, 2024 [1 favorite]


Ants like electronics and water. In spring, ants send out explorers to find places for new colonies and for food. I used boric acid and water, sprayed some areas. It's not great for babies or small pets, but I spray the crevice between the floor and baseboard and there are no babies here; the dog is big and so far doesn't lick floorboards. Diatomaceous earth also works. They will colonize my rural mailbox every year, so I put cinnamon in it, because picking up mail and having ants come out is no fun, and the cinammon is effective, probably disrupts pheromones. Thanks for the reminder, time to spice the mailbox soon; it's not really spring yet. The mail will smell good.

Terro is the stuff if you need to wage war..
posted by theora55 at 10:28 AM on March 7, 2024


Response by poster: The freezer suggestion is great, as is the suggestion to just go ahead and unscrew it all. Thank you!

(Before we get any further down the path of general advice about sugar ants in the spring: I would ask folks to note that I specifically mention Terro liquid ant traps in my original question, so telling me to do that isn't super helpful at this point. )
posted by bluedaisy at 12:53 PM on March 7, 2024


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