Campbell Vaughn: Fire ants are six-legged jerks; here's a strategy for killing colonies
Anyone in the audience that likes fire ants please raise your hand. That is what I thought. I am in the super majority on this one too. I very much dislike them to the point that the thought of the eradicating fire ants makes me a little giddy.
Where did these little jerks come from? We do have a native fire ant, but the one that has taken over 260 million acres in the US are the black imported fire ant (Solenopsis richteri) and red imported fire ant (Solenopsis invicta). Did you see the part about imported? These aren’t like Cuban cigars or Persian rugs, these nasty pests hopped on a boat in South America and bypassed customs in Mobile, Alabama and have spread like wild fire (get the pun?) since arriving in 1918.
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Imported fire ants hinder outdoor activities and harm wildlife throughout the southern United States. These insects are one more reason the bobwhite quail numbers have declined so much over the last few decades: They attack their chicks and consume their food supply.
Fire ant mounds can be unsightly enough to reduce land values while also causing damage to equipment like mower blades and electrical sources.
To add insult to injury, the red and black imported fire ants have hybridized to make another fire ant whose stings can cause serious medical problems. Fire ants do prey on flea larvae, chinch bugs, cockroach eggs, ticks and other pests, but the problems they cause far outweigh these small benefits.
Control infestations with these researched methods
Although eradication is nearly impossible, there is some good news in controlling fire ants locally with some well researched methods. There are control programs that can vastly decrease fire ant populations with a mixture of baits, insect growth regulators and contact killers.
Use bait. Baits are absolutely the best method for treating fire ants because you have a tasty product that these crafty sting machines search out and take back to the colony for supper. These bait are embedded with a poisonous oil and the workers bring them back to the nest and it eventually kills the queen. When the queen is dead, the colony is dead. The trick to these baits is timing.
Avoid wet, cool weather. Fire ant baits work best when it is warm and dry and especially effective when applied in April and late September. These baits are soy (protein) based and can easily turn rancid with the addition of moisture via rain or irrigation. When the food becomes unappetizing, these ants won’t take the bait (these bad puns are free of charge). Look for the weather to have a few days where it isn’t going to rain, procure an appropriate spreader and lightly dust the entire area that needs to be treated. Good results will happen.
Use contact killer in summer. These spring and fall treatments will over time lower fire ant population in an area. If an occasional mound does present itself during the summer, use a contact killer like bifenthrin or carbaryl to treat the individual mound. As fun as it is, kicking the mounds and dumping insecticides on really mad ants is not effective control so please read the label for the best methods of applying these chemicals. Once a bait bag is opened, it will go bad within a couple of months, so use what you have wisely.
For homeowners, Amdro bait is a really good product. For larger areas (over an acre), Extinguish Plus combines growth regulators with a poisonous snack to attack these six legged jerks from multiple fronts. Let’s have a united front to eliminate these fire ants from the places we like to frequent.
From anyone that has been eaten alive by accidently stepping on a fire ant bed, revenge is best served from a rotary spreader.
Reach Campbell Vaughn, the UGA Agriculture and Natural Resource agent for Richmond County, by e-mailing augusta@uga.edu.
This article originally appeared on Augusta Chronicle: Campbell Vaughn: Fire ants are jerks; here's how to fight infestation
