More Ant Science
Jun 28th, 2009 by Alicia
Here’s a page where you can find more natural ways to repel ants (and a few other pests). I do not recommend using borax around kids, however. It is natural, but it is a poison and an irritant.
Victoria had so much fun with the chalk ant maze that I wonder if we could dream up some sort of cinnamon versus pepper experiment or something. Which substance will they avoid the most? We’ve had some ants in the house lately, trying to escape the wet weather. We could see if vinegar repels them better or talcum powder…
And then I really think I’m done with ants for a while! Unless someone knows of a good recipe for replacement gel for a gel ant farm… The Jello experiment was really not such a good idea. They sank in it! 
hey what went wrong with the gel ant farm? You can make a very very strong gelatin mixture by omitting some water and proofing it [the gelatin]
Well, we made it the regular way and poured it in, and the ants sank in it. It was a bit of a train wreck. It needs to be sweetened (I think) because it’s not just their tunneling medium but also their food source. I didn’t know what strength to make it or how to change the ratio and you could go through an awful lot of boxes of jello (and ants!) trying to find the right ratio.
Plus Victoria is trying to be vegetarian and doesn’t like to use jello… I wonder if we could make it with agar agar?