The photo is deceiving: It looks like just a few ants.
Actually there is a million of them over a 200sf section of my lawn.
I believe a can of ant spray will not do the trick outside.
How can I kill these pests???
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Sign up to join this communityThe photo is deceiving: It looks like just a few ants.
Actually there is a million of them over a 200sf section of my lawn.
I believe a can of ant spray will not do the trick outside.
How can I kill these pests???
You can't get rid of them, if you like it or not: they are part of your garden.
If the ants come close to or even in your house, you can try to control them with some poison. But get rid of them completely is really impossible, you'll need so much poison that you'll kill much more than only the ants colony.
I see on your photo that they are on a tile, or flat stone. They seem to like living under tiles and paving stones. So try to reduce them to prevent them to like your garden.
Except for being a nuisance for you, ants are not really harmful for your garden. They seem to milk aphids, which feed on your plants, but probably without ants your plants will also be a target for aphids anyways. So best advice is to live and let live.
These ants look like the harmless kind, there's no need to mess with them.
If, however, they get near or inside the house try pouring some rubbing alcohol, or something similar (not gasoline, etc), down their nest and a few feet around it and light them on fire. Keep doing it till they abandon that nest/die off.
Not a pro or anything but I have had great success eliminating multiple colonies that popped up inside my house.
edit: To prevent those, who think a "don't try this at home" warning makes a difference, from having a heart attack or something, make sure you know what you are doing as you can burn your house down if you light a fire inside.
In Australia, we use a product called "Ant Rid" for indoors, and refer to outdoor-equivalent granules as "Ant Sand".
If you can't source that where you are, apparently the equivalent can be achieved using Borax (with some sweetener); https://www.bhg.com.au/how-to-get-rid-of-ants
Essentially they are sweetened baits that don't kill the ants immediately, instead the ants take it back to the nest - destroying the entire colony.
(I guess we tend to take insects a bit more seriously in the country where "everything can kill you", so various chemicals & insect-control products are legal and abundant)