The Good: Cheap, I suppose
The Bad: Does not kill ants!
The Basics: For fast results - or results at all - when killing ants, Grant's Kills Ants Ant Bait Stations offers a snappy rhyme, but little else.
I would argue that one of the best possible uses of reviews based on experience is to clearly differentiate the experiences other people have to offer perhaps the most well-rounded views on a product. Some might call this being contrarian, I call it efficient and providing reviews based upon powerful and real experiences with a product. In the case of ant killing products, my review of Grant's Kills Ants ant bait stations makes for a strong contrasting review of the others of this product as I found it to be an utterly worthless product.
Allow me to explain: my wife and I have recently moved into my mother's house as part of the much-lauded "economic downturn," which caused me to lose the house I had. We live upstairs with our two cats and one dog in happiness and harmony. At least, we did until Spring sprang. When Spring came to our Upstate New York upstairs room, so did the ants. They were remarkably picky ants; they came in for the cat food. Because Mitzie, our dog, will eat cat food if she has access to it, I have had the two cat dishes in the windowsills of the two windows and our cats hop up and eat their dinner and breakfast there when I feed them. However, one day, our more sedentary Siamese, Brillo, did not finish all of his food and when I went to feed him dinner, I one night, I noticed the dish swarming with ants. I dumped out the dish, cleaned it out, went down to my mother's cupboard and grabbed two ant baits from her box of Grant's Kills Ants Ant Control Ant Bait Stations. I put the dishes elsewhere for two nights before returning them to the windowsill on the third day. That day, Brillo woke my wife up by mewing and led her to the windowsill where she found . . . a bowl full of Dad's-eating ants.
So, the short here is that Grant's Ant Bait Stations do not work. We moved the food again, kept it away for a week - so the ants only had the ant bait station to choose for their dining option - and the ants came back with the cat food (no, our sealed cat food jars were not infested). Two weeks later, as it is now, the ant stations are still out and as an objective test, this morning I put a single piece of cat food at each window, about six inches from the ant bait station (that was at 9 A.M. this morning). As of now - 10:15 as I write this line - both windowsills have ants on them again.
Quite simply, this product does not work.
Claiming to kill the entire colony by killing the queen, Grant's Kills Ants Ant Bait Stations clearly do not do this as the ants return the moment the food does. Grant's Ant Bait Stations come in packs of four for a low price - my mother bought them purely based on their sale price of $1.00 for a box of four. Here is an example of a terrible value. $1.00 killed few or no ants in my experience, whereas the MaxAttrax Ant Baits (reviewed here!) I reviewed cost a little more and wipe ants out entirely.
Using these - if one insists on wasting their money - is easy enough. Open the box, remove the ant bait and place it with the hole facing up near an infested area. These baits are three inches long by an inch and a half wide and about a half inch tall. These white plastic rectangles have a dome with a single hole in the top where the poison is. I've seen ants go in and come out. Two weeks after I first placed these baits down in the infested area, ants are still going in and coming out of the station. These are supposed to work indoors or outdoors, but on the windowsill - which meets the direction's criteria for a flat, hard surface near where ants are seen - these appear to have no effect.
The packaging claims to work immediately, but my experiences proved otherwise.
Like most ant bait stations, there is a small exposed area which might leak the killing substance inside, so they should be kept away from pets and one ought to wash their hands after placing them. Whatever is in them tastes slightly bitter (I had some on my fingers before washing them just from placing the baits) and ought to be enough to detract anyone from tasting these.
When a product like this does not work, there is very little to write about it and that is pretty much where I end this review. Investigating the baits one last time to see if I could come up with anything more, I found three ants near one of the stations. I was delighted because I thought one of the ants next to it might have been dead. So, I nudged the ant and it got up and walked - pretty fast - away. Wow, $1.00 to possibly stun ants. There are vastly better products for this problem on the market.
For other pest control products, please check out my reviews of:
Raid Ant Baits
TAT Ant Traps
Safer Beetle Traps
0/10
For other home and garden products, please check out my index page by clicking here!
© 2011, 2009 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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