Michelle I also had fire ants inside my raised beds, and ended up using Spectracide's "Once and Done" after taking some other steps first. I read many warnings about NOT using fire ant killers on fire ants that are in the garden because the vegetables can absorb the poisons if put there directly or if fire ants bring it back to the mounds in the garden from elsewhere. So I heavily watered the beds every day for about 3 days, which drove them away from the mounds. They'll leave if they're often flooded. Then I "painted" orange oil, a fire ant repellant (which also kills them by dissolving their exoskeletons if sprayed directly on their bodies) on all the surfaces of the raised bed framework. I didn't allow any of the orange oil to get on the soil since it also kills earthworms and vegetation. It took only about four days to drive them out of the beds so they didn't return, but they set up mounds not too far away. THAT's when I used the chemical, scattered it around the mounds. A lot of trouble, yes, but I was so concerned about poisoning my vegetables and us that it seemed the best way. Now my beds are fire ant free.

I'm not sure what supporting data you're looking for. I have used it myself on fire ants and black ants in Arizona. It worked. I've recommended it to friends, it worked for them too. I guess the molasses and sugar attract the ants, the yeast kills them when it expands. Please feel free to clarify your question, if this isn't the data you're looking for.

Slowly, over time, they are adapting to colder weather. When we bought our first house in Texas in 1984, they were already there in the Fort Worth-Dallas area, but the general consensus was they couldn't survive further north than the Dallas-Fort Worth metro area. Here we are 25 years later, and they have traveled much further north than the Dallas-Fort Worth area. I expect that, in the next 20-25 years, they'll make it to northern Oklahoma. Armadilloes, by the way, are also adapting to colder weather and are increasingly found in northeastern states where they've not been known to live previously. I think fire ants will always be with us. They are horrible here in Love County. I mostly manage them with organic techniques, but once every three or four years they seem especially bad and then I break down a buy a chemical product that has proven to be very effective for us called "Come And Get It". I think I last used "Come and Get It" in 2006. Some of our neighbors have also had success with a newer chemical product called "Over and Out", but I haven't tried that one. You can't use these chemical fire ant products around food crops though, so when fire ants get out of hand in the veggie garden or under the fruit trees, I use an organic spinosad-based product. Diane, the first few years we were here, scorpions got us all the time. I completely stopped wearing any shoe that had open heels or open hoes (no sandals!) for 5 or 6 years because the scorpions would get me every single time I stepped out of the house in shoes like that. The last few years, though, I've hardly seen any scorpions and I don't think one has bitten me since about 2003 or 2004. I don't know, nor care, where they went, but I hope they stay there. I finally started wearing flip-flops, sandals and open-toed shoes occasionally although only if I am just passing through the yard on my way to the car. I still can't wear sandals around the yard or garden because of all the venomous snakes, but I wear them to town. Dawn

Ilene, When I have used DE, I have had mixed results. It works better for me when the weather is really, really hot and dry--which makes perfect sense when you consider that they way it kills them is that it cuts their exoskeleton and they dehydrate, thus dying of dehydration. It can take multiple applications for a mound, especially if you have an area where a mound pops up in the same exact spot year after year after year, indicating that in that area, the ants have tunneled deeply underground. (They can build extensive underground networks that go as deeply as 10' beneath the surface of the soil.) It never works as well in an area where I have really healthy soil with lots of organic material that holds moisture. It works much better out in the pastures with poor soil that have poor moisture retention. It also doesn't work as well in areas like the garden and lawn that receive regular irrigation. In well-hydrated or moisture-retentive areas, it kills a few but not as many as it kills in drier areas. Research studies have found it kills some ants by contact, but that the ants don't carry the DE back to the mound, so it only kills the ants who make physical contact with it. Some scientific studies have indicated that DE (as used within the parameters of their study) does not kill many fire ants, but anecdotal evidence by respected organic "experts" have shown that DE does kill some, though perhaps not all, the ants in a mound. I don't like using DE in the veggie garden because it can kill beneficial ground-dwelling insects, and I count on those insects to help keep the pest insects under control. I use plain old food grade DE that I buy in 5 or 10 lb. bags once every few years. I used to be able to buy it in a large bucket (same shape and size as a kitty litter bucket) at Marshall Grain in Ft. Worth when we lived there, but I don't make it down to Marshall Grain much any more, so I just order online. It is shipped in a clear plastic bag, but I store it in a kitty litter bucket. Some of the commercial DE Fire Ant Products are not 100% organic. Many of them contain pyrethrins and contain PBO which is toxic and not allowed in commercial, certified-organic operations. I hope you'll let us know how DE works for you long-term. It seems to work very well to prevent flea infestations in our dog yard, especially when alternated.....spraying the dog yard with orange oil one week and dusting it with DE the following week. For fire ants, though, it seems more hit-and-miss. To be fair to the DE, though, any organic product I've used for fire ants seems hit and miss as well. My dad's ant bed solution that he used decades ago is no longer environmentally correct.....he used to pour gasoline down the hole in the center of a mound and then dropped a match on it. It's a wonder he never burnt himself doing that! I wouldn't recommend it either--it is dangerous and, of course, the gasoline can get into ground water. In general, you "can't" drown fire ants because they form solid balls of ants (the ones I've seen have been about golf ball sized) and float in the water. However, one very old organic method of drowning them, commonly referred to as 'bucketing' the ants, has worked for some people. To bucket them, you partially fill a 5-gallon bucket with water to which you've added a few tablespoons of dishwashing liquid. Then, using a long-handled shovel, you scoop up as much of the mound as you can, dropping the ants, dirt, etc. into the soapy water in the bucket. Once you have all the mound in the bucket, you stir the dirt and soapy water together and add more water if needed to completely cover the mound. If your bucket has a lid, that's even better--place the lid on the bucket. Using this method, most if not all the ants in the bucket die within 24 hours. However, the ants that were below ground survive although you can come back and get them after they build a new mound. Bucketing is great if you just have a couple of mounds. Dawn