If you are seeing a lot of ants, look for aphids or scale on your citrus trees. Aphids can be sprayed off with a strong jet of water and then you can apply *Tanglefoot* to keep the ants off. Generally speaking, they are usually farming the above 2 insects for "honeydew", a secretion of same 2.

It's definitely aphid season. I've found a few on the tender new growth of my Clematis. This is "salad bar time" for sucking type insects. They love the new tender spring foliage.
Scale will be easier to treat at this time as well, because you can catch them in the "crawler" stage, before they develop their hardened exoskeleton. Oil type sprays are good to use now and less harsh than some of the chemical products.

wanda

If you're going to use an oil on the trees, I would suggest spraying at dusk. If you spray with oil during the day, you can burn the leaves.

I use that goopy stuff Tanglefoot made from pine resin. It acts a barrier to the ants and lets me get away with minimal spraying. But it is a god-awful sticky mess and if something gets stuck to it or if there is not a completely closed ring around the trunk, the ants can always find a way through. Also, no branches can touch the ground.

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Both scale and aphids can be controlled with ultrafine horticultural oil with no damage to the tree or fruit. Consider your ants a warning that you have scale and aphids and if you get rid of them your ant problem will go away. Spray weekly three times and you should be rid of them. Al

I 've been told that if you put out cornmeal for the ants they will take it back to their nest and eat it, BUT, they can't digest it cause it expands in them and they EXPLODE.
I bought some cornmel today and am going to try it, the commercial stuff dosen't work. I'll let you know if it works, can't hurt and it's less expenesive than the other stuff Wish me luck.

We use Tanglefoot too. I also use it around the post of our butterfly feeder. It completely stops the ants.

TIP: Make sure that the branches of your citrus are not touching a fence, building, or other structure. We learned the hard way that the ants will enter the tree that way if the trunk is blocked.

Good luck

Here is a link that might be useful: Smith Family Garden Blog