Bob:
Ants love strawberry jello. I watched a TV show about how bugs communicate, and ants like anything with sugar in it, but when given a choice of many sweet foods, it was the sweet jellos that were their favoriate. It's believed that jellow is both soft enough for them to eat rapidly and easy for them to regurgitate once they get back to the colony.
You might consider borrowing a trick from Mother Nature. If you look closely, about the only thing that ever grows under a pine, spruce or fir tree are the hardiest weeds that will grow in the most inhabitable of locations. Coniferous trees have a secret weapon they use against bugs and faster growing plants that would shade them from the Sun. As they grow, the lower branches and the needles on those lower branches fall off. Those needles have a chemical in them that makes them taste acidic, but that chemical dissolves into the ground around the tree, and it prevents bugs and other plants from growing or living in that ground.
I used to have a problem with sow bugs living on the north east side of my building. That side was always in the shade, and so when it rained, it would take a long time for the ground there to dry up. Sow bugs like wet conditions, so there was always sow bugs getting into the apartments on that corner of the building. About 10 years ago, I liberated some discarded Christmas trees from a place here in Winnipeg that people can discard their Christmas trees. I cut off the branches and set down a thick bed of them on that side of my building. By summer, all the needles had dried up and fallen off those branches, which I gathered up and disposed of. What was left behind was a bed of pine needles on the ground on one side of my building. I just let those needles rot in the wet ground.
And, since then, there's never been any sow bugs (or any other kind of bug so far as I can see) getting into the apartments on that side of my building.
I believe the chemicals in the pine needles make the ground undesireable to bugs and plants that would otherwise live in good fertile soil. To a pine tree, that's an advantage because the rotting pine needles at it's base ensure that the pine tree has a place to grow where it won't be shaded by faster growing plants, or have to contend with bugs that might bore into it's bark.
Your ants are just out looking for food. Most likely they live in the ground around (or under) your house. I would try putting down a bed of coniferous tree needles around (and under) your house to make them want to move to more desireable ground.