Are you noticing ants roaming around your kitchen or throughout your home? Although Spring and Summer are when ants are most active, they can become home invaders no matter the time of the year. Generally if you’re seeing ants in your home, it means they’ve found some food to bring back to the rest of their colony. Instead of buying expensive ant treatments, you’ll probably start off by looking for a product you already have on hand to see if you can kill them. In this article we’ll be testing out does Lysol kill ants, and if we recommend this as a DIY ant solution!
Does Lysol Kill Ants?
Yes, technically lysol does kill ants. Lysol contains a chemical called quaternary ammonium which is used in many cleaning products and is designed to kill viruses, bacteria and mold. Quaternary ammonium and Lysol can also kill ants on contact within a few minutes, but it will only kill the ants that you physically spray, and generally takes an abundant amount of Lysol to kill the ants.
Although Lysol will kill ants, it doesn’t always make it a good long-term solution. With ant control, you want a treatment option that will not only kill the ants you physically spray, but also will kill the rest of the colony. Ants live in colonies which can reach sizes of 200,000+ which means you need a treatment that will kill the entire colony, not just the handful of ants you find inside your home.
That’s why we don’t recommend using Lysol to kill ants, and you should use an ant bait treatment which allows the worker ants to bring the bait treatment back to the entire colony, thus killing the entire colony.
What Should You Use To Kill Ants Instead of Lysol?
As mentioned above, although Lysol will kill ants on direct contact, it isn’t effective at eliminating the entire ant colony, so ants will simply keep coming back.
In order to eliminate the entire colony you need to use an ant bait trap such as the Terro T300B Liquid Ant Killer.
The Terro T300B bait treatment is one of the best ways to eliminate an ant infestation because it attracts worker ants to the treatment, who then take the liquid treatment back to the colony, effectively poisoning the entire colony rather than just the worker ants.
Along with this, these Terro T300B treatments are some of the only ant treatments that are safe for pets!
Further more, these liquid treatments are extremely cheap, only around $15 for a pack of 12, so it’s an incredibly easy to setup and cost effective way to get rid of your ant infestation.
How Does Lysol Kill Ants?
As mentioned above, although Lysol isn’t our recommended ant treatment option, it will still technically kill ants.
Lysol contains two ingredients that have the ability to kill ants, quaternary ammonium and ethyl alcohol. Both of these ingredients can break down the ant’s exoskeleton on contact within a minute or two, as well as disrupt the ant’s cell membranes, eventually leading to the ants death. This is similar to using bleach for ants, it technically can get the job done, but isn’t the most effective.
Again, although this might be effective at killing the handful of ants you physically see in your home, and are able to directly spray. But this won’t be helpful against the rest of the colony of ants that lives outside or near your home, and that’s why our testing has showed the Terro T300B bait traps to be most effective.
Do Lysol Wipes Kill Ants?
We talked about Lysol spray killing ants, but what about Lysol wipes?
Although Lysol wipes contain the majority of the same ingredients, they aren’t very effective at killing ants because ants need to be coated with Lysol to be killed.
That being said, work ants will leave a trail of pheromones to and from a food source so that the rest of the colony can find the food. So Lysol wipes are great at getting rid of the pheromone trails which can help reduce ant activity but it won’t completely eliminate the ant infestation.
There are also studies that have shown that ants are attracted to blood, so if you have blood or feminine products around, so cleaning these up with Lysol could be beneficial.
Final Thoughts On Lysol And Ants
As mentioned above, although Lysol will kill ants, it isn’t our recommended solution. You’re much better off with an ant bait trap that will attract ants to to the treatment, and then allows the ants to bring the treatment back to the rest of the colony, effectively killing the entire colony.
I hope this guide on does lysol kill ants was helpful, and provided a bit of insight on getting rid of your ant infestation!
Resources:
