We talked about how bad this would be for the ants — and in particular, the fact that the poison is slow-acting. Crushing them directly, we thought, might be more humane; though it would also be more time-consuming, and less likely to solve the problem.
As long as the queen lives, she will keep sending new ants to you. Unless you can kill them faster than she can collect nutrients to produce new ones (seems unlikely), in which case she will starve to death. So, unless you can find the queen and crush her directly, there is no more humane solution.
I don’t think it is possible to teach the ant colony to respect the boundaries of your house. (Someone please correct me if I am wrong.) The case you mention, where the ants disappeared spontaneously, I suspect that most likely their queen simply died for reasons unrelated to you (predator, sickness...).
As long as the queen lives, she will keep sending new ants to you. Unless you can kill them faster than she can collect nutrients to produce new ones (seems unlikely), in which case she will starve to death. So, unless you can find the queen and crush her directly, there is no more humane solution.
I don’t think it is possible to teach the ant colony to respect the boundaries of your house. (Someone please correct me if I am wrong.) The case you mention, where the ants disappeared spontaneously, I suspect that most likely their queen simply died for reasons unrelated to you (predator, sickness...).