Hugh Lovel (we miss you, Hugh) has pointed out in the past that an over abundance of ants indicates a formic acid imbalance in the soil and that their presence can be seen as nature's attempt to correct it. I'm wondering if anyone has found a way to help this process along--by supplying some formic acid precursor, a cell salt, a homeopathic? My rather primitive method has simply been to try and figure out what the ants need and feed it to them--it seems always to be either sugar or protein--and if that doesn't work we just agree to co-exist. But then they're not causing me any great losses.
An ant story: Last winter some of my houseplants were exuding an unpleasant sticky substance (no aphids though) that created quite a mess over time. This was completely taken care of by the tiny little sugar ants that came in the spring and meticulously cleaned up every last one of them.
