Customer Reviews

Combat Ant Killing Gel 27grams

5 star:		(41)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

We get ants twice a year, in winter when it's cold and rainy (in California) and again in summer when the sun parches the yard. Trails of small black ants are soon marching through the kitchen, bedrooms, across the carpets and ceilings, even up thru the slab foundation to the bathroom in the middle of the house. Caulking and spackling the cracks and gaps helps some but they always find a new route. Some of the other controls like RAID work immediately but we don't like to use sprays inside, and it only lasts a day or so (Windex with ammonia does just as good for immediate cleanup).

So out comes the gel. We put about dozen drops along the trail and near the entry point, and keep refreshing for a day or so.

Is it diabolical to take joy in seeing rings of ants greedily pack shoulder to shoulder consuming the gel drops? Regardless, they start immediately, take it back to the nest, and within a day are no more.

Be prepared. Be hospitable. They're already inside so welcome them kindly and serve the gel. And, easy now, keep your joy in check.

***** Update 10/24/10 *****
After using this for a couple of years I've found something new and better. Hot Shot Ultra Clear Roach & Ant Gel.
Search Amazon for - Hot Shot Ultra Clear Roach & Ant Gel and read my review.

Last year we had a real bad ant problem. I put out different bait and traps, all to no avail! So I called a professional exterminator, he came out and I watched carefully as he applied some stuff with what looked like a syringe. I got a glimpse of the product name and as soon as he left I jumped on the net to look it up the product and ordered some. Now the Combat product that ths review is about has the exact same active ingredient, in the exact same strength. I paid $[...] plus shipping. I got a lot more than comes in the Combat package, but if I had it to do again I'd buy the smaller amount - it just doesn't take a lot.

It works GREAT. It calls itself a gel, but it is very thin almost the consistency of a syrup. It will drip when you are applying it if you aren`t careful. I opened my applicator by taking a very small nail (the small one that came with a picture hanging thingy) holding it with a pair of pliers and heating it up over a stove. Then taking the hot nail a giving it a quick spray of Pam and push it into the tip of the applicator. This gave me a much smaller hole in the tip than cutting of the tip. Save the nail and use it to stop up the tip up when you are done applying the gel.

When you have ants follow the line of ants to find the entry point, this is where you apply the gel. I push the tip up to the crevice or small hole where they are coming from and push in some gel carefully. DO NOT SPRAY ANT KILLER AROUND IT!!! Now it takes a little patience, just walk away. The ants that are inside the wall stop at the gel and feed, the ants on the inside the house will work their way back to the crevice and start to feed too. I'd check back the next day, if I found ants again I'd give it another small shot of gel. We had several more infestations in different parts of the house over the next few days (it seemed that they had gotten into the attic and found different entry points). But in a week or so all traces of ants were gone. This year (as I still have plenty of gel left) whenever we see a line of ants anywhere outside the house I give it a blob of gel and check back in a day or two and we haven't had any get into the house yet - Yeaaa!!!

We haven't had a problem with our cats. In the house you end up pushing the gel in out of the way spaces where the cats can't get to, outside it's a bit more tricky, but with a little creativity I can find a crack or spot that the ants are by but the cats can't get to.

Hope this helps.

I highly recommend this product.

This is the best stuff on the market, bar none. It works better than the product provided by our commercial pest control company. The clear gel comes in an injector so it is easy to control where and how much.

We, along with all our neighbors, get ants during the first really hot spell of summer. Millions and millions of ants find their way into the house in the oddest of places, tracking through hallways, bedrooms, and closets as well as finding their way to the kitchen. We put down a glop of Combat Ant Gel at the trail near the point of entrance, mop up all ants who have already trekked beyond the glop, and let the remaining ants call all their brothers to the feast. They swarm the glop and take it back to their nest, feed it to the queen, and Voila! The colony is wiped out. It works outdoors, too. I put it on the fence rail and on trees whenever and wherever I find ants.

Usually they feed for only one day and are gone within 24 hours. Refresh the glop if necessary, because you don't want them to run out of food and go looking again. No muss, no fuss, no stinky sprays. Any left-over gel on floors or counters is easy to clean up with a moist paper towel.

The first time my girlfriend and I used this product, the effect was a sight to behold. It was Christmas 2004, and we had returned from an afternoon out to find that ANTS had discovered a shattered candy cane, which had fallen from our Christmas tree. So we went out to Walgreens and bought this Combat Ant Gel stuff. After squirting out several blobs of the gel next to the ant trail, right at the source where they were coming in through the wall, we watched with amazement as the ants immediately began to notice, and feast greedily upon, the deadly gel. Within an hour, the ants were coming in droves, all wih the singular purpose of getting some of that gel. For many of the ants, the gel seemed to have a drug-like effect: their movements became lethargic and unfocused. We went to bed that night wondering what would happen to the horde of doped-out ants in our living room.

The next morning we awoke, and...the ants were gone. Vanished. No sign of them. Magic. And they never came back.

The gel had apprently worked as intended: the ants had taken the poision back to their queen, effectively wiping out the colony.

Fast-forward to summer 2006. We are in a new house, and again we get ants (this time they seem to be coming in for no specific reason, going toward no particular destination). So we break out our precious little remaing stock of the gel -- the leftovers from nearly 2 years ago. Well, the ants seem interested, but not obsessed as they ought to be. The gel helps, but the ants don't totally disappear.

Is the magic gone, we wonder? We suspect our aging product has lost its potency, so we determine to buy a fresh batch. To our disappointment, we cannot find the Combat Ant Gel at any drug store, hardware store, or super store! I finally locate it here on Amazon, and order up a stockpile, fearing the product may be going off the market.

And then reality sets in. Equipped with our fresh supply of the gel, we go to work on the ants, who keep entering our house from diferent entry points. But on each occasion, the ants seem a little less obsessed with the gel. Now, when we squirt a blob on the floor next to their trail, the ants casually snack on it, with an infuriatingly defiant "take it or leave it" attitude. And they don't realy go away. Sometimes the ants will disappear, but never for very long.

Have the ants developed an immuninity to the gel? Are we simply dealing with a different breed of ants than we were in our first apartment? (For the record, they look idential to me -- the little tiny black ones.)

I don't have the answers to these questions. What I do know is that we are now talking to our landlord about calling an exterminator. It's hard to accept that Combat Ant Gel, which worked such wonders the first time around, could be so ineffective now. But that seems to be the case.

If you have an ant problem, definitely try out this product. I hope it works as well for you as it did for us, the first time.

Ants love this stuff! At least...they think they love it. In order to defeat the ants, you must think like the ants. You must watch them, learn their ways, never revealing your desire to conquer them once and for all. This all takes about half an hour, give or take. It is very important to find as many, if not, all of their entry points both inside and outside of your mighty castle. One great thing about ants is their strict sense of conformity. They travel together and follow the same paths throughout your most glorious castle, so the only work you have to do is squirt some gel near and around their entry points and along their oh-so-predictable walking paths. If you can manage to find their ant hill, then you've hit the motherload. Once the bait is set, it's literally only a matter of seconds before they go straight for it. It's like watching a tiny little ant kegger death party (refer to customer shot someone else uploaded to know what I'm talking about). And you watch them, laughing, realizing that genocide can actually really fun! Nothing in this world makes you feel like more of a god. And it's fun for the kids too!

Problems: The tubes are pretty small, so use it sparingly or find a multi-pack. Even for a small, two-story castle like mine, one tube didn't seem to be enough as my enemies seemed to have formed a retaliation about a week after I thought I had rid of them. However, I might have had more than one colony invading my castle that required extra artillery. The world will never know. What I do know is to be super gentle when releasing the epic death gel; it comes out very fast and you can waste a lot of it if you're not careful. Also, the gel is not clear; it's more of a, for lack of better terms, urine color. So if you're self-conscious about guests coming over and wondering what all of the yellow stuff is on the walls, floor, or counters are, you should try to keep it out of plain sight if possible or wait 2-3 days for your UNINVITED guests to vacate the premises. Otherwise, I have no complaints about this stuff. Thanks for reading!

The reason I titled this review as I did is because an ant control "product" isn't what works per se, it's the insecticide it contains, followed by whether the ants will eat the bait or just walk through it. I spent a great deal of time researching, and according to university studies, fipronil is the most effective ingredient because it spreads easily through the colony and yet its toxicity is sufficiently delayed that the ants don't die before they can pass it on. As a result 95% eradication of the colony within 3 days is typical.

That's what the research says compared to other ingredients, and it worked just as well for me on every occasion that I've had to use it. If I come home to discover an ant invasion, I remove competing sources of food (read: clean better and take the trash out) find where the ants seem to be entering the house, and apply the gel (wear a rubber glove; it's hard not to get some on your skin). The sight of ants lining up around the bait like little pigs at a trough is quite gratifying. They eat their fill, leave, and never come back. It may take 3 days to completely wipe out the colony, but every time I've used it the ants eat, leave after a few hours, and never return.

Now, perhaps I've been fortunate in that they have always eaten the gel. Fipronil should work if you just contrive to have them walk through the gel, but obviously if they eat and share with their buddies it's a guaranteed home run. However, there are sweet ants and protein ants, and it's likely some species may not take a given bait no matter what the product is. In that case you could mix the gel with, say, peanut butter for grease/protein ants. If they don't eat the gel, you obviously need to find out what food they like. The benefit of a gel product like this is that you can mix it with anything. There are some other products like Maxforce FC that also use fipronil, but again the takeway is: 1) use a fipronil-based product, and 2) find a way to get them to eat it if they don't eat the gel itself. Do that and the battle will be won very quickly, and you can bask in the triumph of superior intelligence and the scientific method; never again will the legions of tiny invaders cause undue consternation.

I had done some home repairs where I noticed some ants getting in the house. I fixed the damage and I must have trapped some in the house, whereby they became a huge problem overnight. With this product I was able to solve the problem within 3 days. Here's the details.

The ants we had were carpenter ants. They burrow in soft wood and make their colonies in there. They are the "big black ugly ones". First thing that I did was search the internet to identify the species, which I was able to confirm (based on habitat and images)

Now that I knew the species I searched for a few hours for the proper treatment. It was fortunate for me because I had not yet tried any poisons or other types of remedies. This gel product by combat is very effective as it contains an active ingredient "fipronil". The poison is time delayed giving the ants time to ingest, communicate with others, and bring back to the queen in the nest. So that's it for step 2, I just had to find the stuff. After looking ALL OVER the place, I found this product at ACE Hardware.

Next, I had to find out where these buggers were getting in - I actually did this before I purchased the treatment, and this was truly the most troubling part of the process. After staying up until midnight researching, I decided to search for the critters were entering the house. Equipped with a flashlight, I then searched the foundation around the house. It did not take long until I had see a path of ants. This was simply an amazing sight - 3 to 7 ants wide, going all the way up the side of the house, under the gutter and into the fascia. I followed the ant trail away from the house to a corner of the yard which was around 100'. Next, I went into the attic and was breathtaking by the 100's of ants I had seen walking under the insulation. This was no joke, and surpassed anything I had seen on national geographic. While my wife slept that night, I sat wide awake knowing what was going on in the attic.

7AM came along and after quite a search, I got the product... I knew where the ant trails were already, so I needed a nonporous surface to keep the product from soaking into the ceiling joists, or any wood that I applied it on. It comes out like a thin gel - I used 1" blue masking tape on the joists. I put 6 drips on 3 different strips of tape along the trails in the attic. That night I went up there at 12:00AM again, and witnessed each drip being surrounded by feeding ants - Now for the wait.

After a couple of days I had gone up into the attic again to witness the carnage. 100's of dead ants EVERYWHERE. Some areas you could not even see the color of the insulation. The cleanup was a pain, but rather satisfying.

So this story has a happy ending. I reside in IL, and this problem happened in August. We've been ant free for almost 2 years now.

The moral of the story is that these ants had been an indicator of water damage. I had improper drainage due to some undersized gutters, and a poorly flashed return. This caused the sheathing to get wet and created a hospitable environment for the carpenter ants. So even though you get rid of the ants, you may wish to fix any water leaks before you have a bigger problem.

As for Combat Ant Killing Gel - I cant say enough good things about it, although I've read stories about dogs licking up the stuff, but apparently surviving just fine. Just keep in mind, this stuff does kill things and I'm pretty sure its not too good for fluffy or fido. Also, you dont want to mix treatments (like this one with powder, etc). That can render the treatment ineffective. Hope this helps, good luck!

Combat Ant Kill Gel is a great product as long as you use it with care. The gel needs care in application so that it does not come into contact with surfaces that can be penetrated by the gel (staining) and so that it is out of reach of children and pets. You can always apply it into cracks, on pieces of small scrap paper or even on the back of masking tape to be removed at a later date.

Place the gel near cracks where ants are located and along ant trails. The ants can take up to 24 hours to find the gel and, once they do, they will swarm to eat as much as they can. The poison is then brought back to the ant colony and shared - killing the source of your ant troubles. (Much better than the never ending cycle of spot killing like using Raid.)

ISSUE: Amazon currently sells this product through Polsteins Home & Beyond, a non-Amazon Prime seller. The cost of the product through them is currently $4.99 (list price) and Polsteins Home & Beyond ships it for $6.11. Yes, that is a 100% mark-up for the original product price followed by shipping the product for another 122% more. Not criminal...just very, very unethical.

I would highly recommend avoiding buying this product through Polsteins Home & Beyond due to this type of predatory pricing behavior. You can find companies that have a good shipping policy and competitive prices through a simple "Combat Ant Kill Gel" search on the web.

This Combat ant gel that comes in a syringe works better for us than those ant traps they have to crawl into that contain the same type of gel, because the ants in our house are too tiny to step up into those traps easily and they don't have any problem getting to the little blobs we lay out on their track with this. I didn't give it five stars, because we have to be careful where we put it because of pets. Nobody around here carries it in this form this year, they only offer the traps, so I'm glad I can get it from Amazon because the problem has reappeared and the last application we gave them (from an older syringe that's now empty) didn't get them all and we didn't have much left to use. Nothing I've used eliminates them completely, but we probably have more than one ant colony going on and I don't want to use an exterminator who sprays, because of small pets. If you have larger ants, then the traps will probably work fine. I'll try this again, thanks!

Update: I found some at the local KMart and some of the ants didn't seem interested when I first put it out, but they eventually piled on and ate it. I don't see them around, now.

I was having a problem with small black ants in the kitchen. It was difficult using a spray since the ants were in areas where food is placed. first tried Terro (had good ratings), but the ants weren't going for the gel. Next tried Combat, and the ants went for it like crazy (had to add more gel to the index card it was placed on). It's important that no matter how many ants come out of the woodwork, to just leave them alone and let them feed. After I checked on them the next day, they were gone and haven't returned. Just because these ants went for the Combat, doesn't mean that the Terro is no good, just that these particular ants prefer the combat gel. I'm keeping the Terro just in case the next colony doesn't go for the Combat gel, but might like the Terro gel (different formula).