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Evening all!  I am fairly new to gardening, so need your advice.  I noticed a lot of ants crawling all over my raspberry canes this afternoon.  What can I do to deter them - do they need deterring?  I'm determined to enjoy some fresh home-grown raspberries this year (my first ever), so would welcome your observations...

Well, there might be an ants nest at the base, in which case the plants might suffer when the hot weather comes. Or, more likely, there may be aphids on your raspberries - if so you will see the shiny, sticky honedew on the leaves - and the ants are coming to feed on the honeydew. You can blast off the aphids with strong jets of water. This early in the year is a good time to catch them, once you spray them off with water, the ants won't bother coming.

ah yes, strong jet of water - only problem is we have a bloody hosepipe ban!

any other ideas for water jets? (sort of me buying a water pistol? i guess i could try to freecycle one)

If you get a back pack sprayer, plastic, the sort for applying pesticides, it can spray at up to 3 bar pressure, which is more than enough.

http://www.screwfix.com/app/sfd/cat/pro.jsp;jsessionid=V4UFO3JIACSLZCJO2C4CIIQ?ts=98023&id=19058
which seems dear to me, but I noticed on Ebay these:
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&rd=1&item=7744638687

Thanks very much for your suggestions.  I'm going to give them a nice spray of water with my pesticide sprayer, which was a bargain buy from Lidl.  Let's see how I get on...
thanks again!