I'm a new beekeeper. I've chosen to raise my bees naturally and that means that I'm not going to introduce anything to the beehive that would not naturally be there. I chose to do this because I think that the honey produced will be a lot healthier for me and the people I share it with. I also think that natural beekeeping will work out cheaper for me in the long run.

One day while doing an inspection of my beehive I noticed that there were a lot of little red ants around, and on the outside of the bee hive. I thought that the ants might be a problem because once these little ants swarm, there are so many that I don't think the bees could actually defend their hive against them. I tried to identify the type of ant but there are a lot of ant species out there - the best guess I could come up with is the Pharaoh ant.

I decided that the best way to approach the problem would be to create some type of barrier that the ants would not cross. If you read my article on Baby Horned Lizards and the Harvester Ant you'll know why I'm opposed to the complete eradication of these little ants.

While studying about solutions to this ant problem I read about Boric acid which is widely used in insect baits as a method of poisoning. Usually the bait has something mixed with Boric acid to attract the insect to it. I decided not to use Boric acid because even though the bees might not be attracted to it without something sweet mixed with it, they might track it into the hive on their feet after they've walked through it or landed in it. Tracking it in on their feet would surely poison the hive. It would also be possible that ants walking through it would poison the hive by the same method.

I also read about salt and how it was a "great" natural ant control alternative. It was suggested that salt would deter the ants and that they would not cross a line of it.

After deciding to try salt I poured a nice thick line of salt the whole way around my beehive and watched the ants reaction to it.

With major disappointment, I learned that salt is not a good method of ant control.

When I wet the salt the ants would curl up almost instantly - surely these ants died. But when the salt was dry the ants seemed unaffected by it. They crossed the line of salt as if it weren't even there and even carried off some of the salt crystals.

I guess it's back to the drawing board on the natural ant control problem. Right now the little red ants have slowed down a lot because of the cold so I may have to wait for the spring to try again.