I know that it's not necessarily good for the tree, but I wanted to get some verification before passing the option by.

Long story short, my four-foot tall potted blood orange tree has ants and I don't want to do an ant mass murder. I tried a bit of diatomaceous earth, and it killed some of them, but every morning I'd come back and feel a bit guilty killing parts of a colony of insects that really aren't doing anything wrong at all, and might even be beneficial to the plant in summer.

It's been warm enough recently, so I was trying to coax the colony into moving to no avail - would it kill my plant if I shook out as many of the ants as I could and repotted it?

If it'll damage it too much, I just plan on bringing it in for winter and putting a perimeter of DE around it, although I'd like to give the ants a fighting chance, at least.

Yes, I'm aware I sound like a crazy person. Thanks!