ants in keyboard

Not being of much help, but my car was infested with ants this last summer. Creepy as all get out.

I am sure there are crumbs that get into the keyboard with out you knowing it. Other then taking the keys off or blowing hi pressure air in there (not suggested and the little blow cans wouldn't do it), there is probably not much you can do other then let the ants clean your keyboard out 🙂 I highly doubt they can do much damage since the internal film circuit is tightly enclosed and the little rubber key pads would prevent the ants from getting to it anyway.

Other then that, I doubt ants could do much harm unless they build a nest. The one thing I would be concerned about is having ants in the house period. Maybe it is like a early warning system 😉 😀

best of luck and welcome to the forums,
garrett

Hey azzabella,
Well this came up a while ago and I suggested placing the keyboard in a container and filling the container with CO2 like from dry ice. Some other posters were skeptical that that would work. An alternate might be Halon but I haven't seen that around for a while. Certainly pulling all the air out would do the trick.
Or seal the keyboard up real good (air tight) and put it in your freezer. When you take it out let it warm up before you open it up (condensation). Not sure if that or heat would kill them but your local county extension agent would know or an entomologist at your local university.

I do not eat or drink in the room

I wonder why or if they're attracted to the keyboard? Then again it is Australia and your insect population is different from ours. There might be some glue or chemical that they find attractive that's in the keyboard.
Richard

Hey azzabella,
Well this came up a while ago and I suggested placing the keyboard in a container and filling the container with CO2 like from dry ice. Some other posters were skeptical that that would work. An alternate might be Halon but I haven't seen that around for a while. Certainly pulling all the air out would do the trick.
Or seal the keyboard up real good (air tight) and put it in your freezer. When you take it out let it warm up before you open it up (condensation). Not sure if that or heat would kill them but your local county extension agent would know or an entomologist at your local university. Someone like that might also know a non toxic way to kill them.

I do not eat or drink in the room

I wonder why or if they're attracted to the keyboard? Then again it is Australia and your insect population is different from ours. There might be some glue or chemical that they find attractive that's in the keyboard.
Richard

azz,

I thought maybe the ants were attracted to the heat of the computer

But you said they were in the keyboard.

I think it is a fault intrinsic to the materials of the keyboard itself.

If you believe that to be the case try a different keyboard.

I'm not about to go dipping my keyboard in water

Well CO2 is carbon dioxide and water is H2O. H2O is not going to be good for your keyboard.

If your keyboard has not become a nest site, you should be able to observe ants following the chemical trail that will lead them to your keyboard. You can break this trail (from the third site below):
"Wipe up the ant’s chemical trails with soapy water or vinegar and water. Without their trails, the ants are lost."

You can also use some of the following control methods:
http://blogs.abc.net.au/sa/2008/11/get-rid-of-ants.html
http://reviews.ebay.com.au/Getting-Rid-of-Ants-and-Cockroaches_W0QQugidZ10000000 007383852
http://paipm.cas.psu.edu/813.htm

I've found the best solutions when ants like these invade is to use a poisoned bait. Of course you'd do this after cleaning up all loose ants in the house and determining point of entry. Here in the States there are basically grease eaters or sweet eaters. Formerly I used a bait that contained strychnine but modern ones use boric acid or abamectin. You have to find the entry trail and put the bait across it. The ants take it back to the nest and the nest dies.

Richard

azz as a follow up,

Oh and BTW if this is a new Intel iMac you should post this in the Intel section above. This forum is for the old G4 iMac Planar which uses the pro keyboard.
Yours is the ultrathin wired Apple Keyboard? Which I'm actually typing on at the moment.
If you post up there you will reach the Apple users who have your keyboard.

Also I searched on these forums and found:
http://tinyurl.com/bjqo84
and Googled and found:
http://tinyurl.com/avy7bx

So it seems to be a common problem for any electronics.

Richard

cool! strange problem , as its the 200th anniversary of darwins birth perhaps its a freaky "natural selection" deal the birth of a new ant species, the apple ant, do you run "Darwin" on your Mac perhaps thats attracting them?

keyboard, try washing your hands after eating cakes and before you type if you don't already.. just a thought

gotta be noise .. try disconecting your keyboard and see if the ants still come back.

Hey jane,

There are no obvious trails to the keyboard and it's even more strange because both times i've found it with ants crawling all over, the ants are seriously just around/in the keyboard and thus I can't figure out where they're coming from.

Never heard back from azzabella.
However in one of the many references I gave her they recommended cleaning up around the keyboard with mild detergent. Not on the keyboard itself but in the area around it. This is because ants follow chemical trails left by scouts and they're always looking for food. It could be they're mistaking something there for food. This was/is a constant problem for clients of mine esp in the spring when the ants invade their houses. I use an ant specific poison and place it on the trail. Sometimes I'll mix it with cooking oil, honey or sugar (in solution) depending on the species since around here their either oil or sweet eating. The poison used to be Strycnine but now it's borax. The brand is Terro:
http://www.terro.com/
There's also a page of FAQs:
http://www.terro.com/faq-ants.php
Richard

When I lived in Cooroy I found hundreds of ants moved into my Camcorder. A hair dryer and vacuum cleaner sorted it. Ants don't like heat, so using a hairdryer to warm an area to move them along is the process. There will be eggs in the keyboard for sure and a queen would be there so take the keyboard outside and use the hair dryer and watch the evacuation.

Hi All

I felt the need to reply to this post. TWICE I have had this issue with two different Apple computers. Two years ago, I lived in Jamaica and had bought an G4 iBook. One day I looked down and small red ants were coming out of everywhere, not just the keyboard but every other space they could possibly squeeze out of. I was terrified they were going to chew through something and destroy my new computer.

The only thing I could think to do was put ant killer around the computer and turn it off for a few days, because I figured it was the heat that attracted them in the first place. I felt I was performing a voodoo ritual! The computer was sitting on my dining table with a grey pile of ant killer surrounding it in a circle. I also tried to keep something sweet beside the computer to draw the ants out. I was panicked and nobody I knew had ever had this problem before. However, eventually the ants went away, I moved back to Canada, and have not had the problem again. Unfortunately, I can't remember what eventually worked to get the ants out, or if they eventually left on their own.

That is until yesterday. I am back in Jamaica and I left my computer on sleep when I went out of the house for a few hours. I put it inside my suitcase before I left (this is a different laptop - a MacBook Pro) and thought nothing of it. I always figured the issue with ants before was a strange incident that could never happen twice. I was wrong. As I type there are ants coming out from everywhere. When I saw them last night I turned the computer off and moved it from the original spot to a clean surface, but this morning they were still there. I googled the problem and found most people thought the problem was a joke, but one post said that removing the battery will help. The theory is that the ants are attracted to the energy emitted from the battery.

So I sit here typing with the battery in the other room and hope for the best. The battery has been out all day and I seem to have way less ants than I did this morning. I plan to take the machine in to a Mac Dealer and have them spray compressed air inside, but I have to wait until Monday. I will post again and let you know if having the battery removed for 48 hours helps at all. Like I said it seems I have less ants after about 12 hours.

The strange thing is this has happened to me twice - two different computers (but both Macs) and two different houses. I don't eat or drink around my computer and nothing has been spilt on it. The first incident might have been a fluke, but to have this happen twice (and none of my PC using friends have EVER had an issue) convinces me there is something about the energy frequency emitted by a Mac that attracts these specific ants.

The one thing that makes me take heart is that the ants did no damage to my computer before and the computer still works fine to this day. I'm not wanting to use ant killer again because I don't want them to be dying inside the computer, I think the better way is to get a professional to take it apart and blow out the ants that are in there.

If anyone else has any ideas, though, I'd be happy to hear!

Hello

Well, the battery has been out of my computer for about a day and a half now, and I am happy to report that I have been using my computer today for more than three hours and have only seen three ants (and none for the past two and a half hours). This is a vast improvement from the hundreds I had yesterday and the day before. Therefore, I do think that it is something to do with the sound/smell/magnetic field of the battery. The computer is just as hot as usual, so I don't think it is the heat so much as the energy/sound of the computer that attracts them. I know the initial poster of this thread had a problem with their keyboard only, so I'm not sure this info will be helpful, but I thought I'd post it anyway.

The following is the thread where I read about the battery:

http://www.vegsoc.org.au/forummessages.asp?Thread_ID=4022&TopicID=13
"Your battery needs to be replaced. Usually, when batteries discharge, and they do this regularly, it creates a magnetic field which ants love. Batteries which have been used for awhile vent a gas/smell also, which the ants also love. Your battery is getting too old and unstable and needs to be replaced."

I'm not sure it is because the battery is old or needs replacing, since the first time I had this issue the computer was only a few months old, but I do suspect the batteries used in Apple must emit something that ants love.

I also thought this was a good idea:
There is also some nice ULTRA Sound boxes designed to keep Ants away they put out sounds Ants don't like. Get one and PLUG it in near your Computer to prevent ANTS from coming back.

Good luck to anyone else having this problem. I think I will still have a technician look at the computer to make sure all of the ants are gone, but in the meantime, I am keeping the battery out for another day and enjoying my ant-free existence!

Did it work?! I have ants in my keyboard too!! 😟

An interesting article I just came across ...

http://www.macriot.com/article.php/20070112012912354