Bloody Beverly

     If this title conjures up visions of a machete wielding Hainesportonian decorating a room with blood spatter, scale it back a little.  I'm out for the blood of ants  (yes, they have a type of blood - a mixture of haematocytes and plasma).  The window sills at the very end of the house were crawling with the little pests.  They don't enter the house.  They just stroll around the sills for a while, then leave.
     From where do the come?  Where do they go?  I don't know those answers, but I do know they are going to die.  They will die by laundry additive - the twenty mule team kind.  Boric acid or just plain borax is a low toxicity, effective pesticide against an asortment of bugs.  Rather than buying boric acid, I purchased a couple of boxes of borax because, after I wipe out the ant colonies, I can use the leftovers as a detergent booster.
     While it is tempting to grab a can of Raid®, ants should be baited, not bombed.  If you spray, you kill only the worker ants who have gone out searching for food.  If you bait, the workers take tainted food back to the nest to share with the entire colony, including the egg producing queen. Kill her and your job is done.  
     The recipe for ant bait can vary.  The trick is to use enough boric acid/borax to slowly kill, allowing the ants time to return to the nest and share the bounty before dropping dead, but not enough for the ants to detect it in the delivery medium.  Ants will ignore baits if the offerings don't seem quite right.  I mixed 3/4 tsp. of borax to 10 tbs. of simple syrup (the recipe for simple syrup is 50% boiling water to 50% granulated sugar).  The internet site I consulted recommended maple syrup, but we use low calorie syrup, and ants aren't attracted to artificial sweeteners.  Jelly, especially mint apple flavor, is recommended on Texas and Nebraska agricultural extension websites.  Some ants prefer grease rather than sugar, so you can mix the borax with vegetable oil or peanut butter.  I filled soda bottle caps with bait and, using some double sided tape to hold them down, placed them in the window sills.  The ants came in droves and drank for a couple of days.  Then they were gone.
     Here are two good articles:

http://lancaster.unl.edu/pest/resources/antbait267.shtml

http://homeguides.sfgate.com/boric-acid-maple-syrup-recipe-ants-71304.html

     If you want to identify the ant species causing your infestation, try contacting the Rutgers Cooperative Extension of Burlington County.  http://njaes.rutgers.edu/county/quickinfo.asp?Burlington