One homemade remedy you might try: mix icing sugar half and half with baking soda. The sugar attracts the ants, the baking soda kills them. Apparently they cannot expel the gas it creates... Place the mixture in a narrow-ncked bottle (like a ketchup bottle or milk jug) on its side in the yard. Chickens should not be able to get the bait and I doubt it would harm them it they did. The ants will carry the bait back to the nest and it should wipe out the whole colony. If you do try this, please let me know how it works. It was some kid's science fair project and I have had good results using it... but would like to hear how it works for others.

I have sandy loam soil on my property. We get regular ant colonies in various areas of our backyard where they will colonize a patch, perhaps 2'x2' or slightly larger, and dig their colony underneath. This area always has rich grass, and the weeds are shortly completely eliminated. The grass doesn't necessarily come in thicker in that area - it generally remains thin like the rest of my lawn, but all the 'infill' of weeds is elminated. Has anyone else seen this? Why / how does an ant colony have this effect? My immediate thought is soil aeration... but if that is the case, the weeds would die because of the grass choking them out. But the grass isn't necessarily improved. On the downside, once the ants move on in the fall, the colony tends to cave in, and that beautiful weed-free patch of grass collapses a beautiful, weed-free sinkhole 2-6" deep that needs to be filled and re-seeded come spring. On the flip side, I'm slowly renovating my lawn one ant colony at a time!

Lou, I don't like Sevin either, or Dylox for that matter. But when the choice is grub poison or dead lawn, erosion over the winter, and start over next year, that is an easy choice. From a lawncare perspective, earthworm populations are irrelevant if the the lawn has been killed off by grubs. I have had massive grub damage in the past. In order to avoid the need to use those poisons I use imidacloprid as a preventative in early July. The stuff is much less harmful to earthworms than those others, but only works as a preventative. If you have never had massive grub damage you might not see the value in using that. But I do. Yes, milky spore (only for Japanese beetles, and only after a few seasons of application) and yes, nematodes (which are also specific to the actual beetles that happen to fly into your lawn). But my local extension office tells me that milky spore does not work well here, and I am not about to try netting and dissecting all of the beetles flying around in May and June in order to figure out which nematodes to buy. If you don't have a grub problem in your "organic" lawn, it is either because you are using a combination of milky spore and nematodes that luckily seem to be working against your particular pests, or you just don't have those pests - yet. But regardless it has nothing at all to do with fertilizing with grains, or brewing the perfect compost tea, or mowing high and mulching, or any other "organic" practice. Which I am sure are what you are about to suggest as grub control measures. I'm just saying that when folks here present real grub problems in spring or fall, you could at least recognize that the only solutions - at that point - are synthetic pesticides like Dylox and Sevin. Any other advice, again, at that point, will result in a dead lawn. You might also be up front about the difficulties in combining milky spore and nematodes in an effective way when you don't know exactly what sort of grubs you have, and of the seasons long delay in milky spore even becoming somewhat effective against even just the japanese beetle. /off soapbox Paul

It's obvious to me that the people who claim ants do not kill trees have absolutely no experience with fire ants or any knowledge of them....I've noticed they are all from more northern states than Florida. Yes, certain ants will kill trees. Fire ants kill trees and shrubs. They are a horrible scourage here and were imported from Brazil in the early 1900's into Pensacola via cargo ships. They are one of the most miserable creatures on earth, and a prime example of how careless importation of foreign species is so disruptive to another area. In Brazil there is a fly that keeps the fire ants in check there, and then other birds and animals that keep the flies in check, and so on. Here, our native species do not know what to do with them, and they have flourished and gotten out of control. This is all information given to me by our local extension office. They have become so bad since the last tropical storm on our property, (and other properties in our area that did not flood), that I can't garden or walk to my clotheslines without being bitten. The bites are horrible. They burn, sting, and itch all at the same time, and then the bite forms a nasty pustule. Imagine having 50 bites. Imagine a tree or shrub dealing with them. We are having our farmer's co-op come to treat our whole 10 acres. They are not just present at the mounds. They scout all over the place. Our property did not flood, unlike many unlucky people in my area, so the fire ants have migrated to properties that stayed dry. They literall float mounds of themselves on top of flooded areas. I saw it with my own eyes. They have killed 7 rose bushes on fortuniana root stock, 5 citrus trees, and several of my native holly trees so far since the storm. They eat the roots and they bore up into the trunks of the trees. Once established into and near the trees they are almost impossible to get rid of. I've tried everything, including drenches. I am going to have my husband pull them with the tractor and burn them. Since the roots are so damaged I could actually easily remove them with a shovel, but I won't go near them any more. In addition to all of this it appears that they have displaced many of our native ants, who do not bite, and whom are important to the balance of our ecology. They've even appeared to have eaten all our earthworms. I can't find any in my composted areas. So, unfortunately, we have to "nuke" our whole property and then try to introduce the beneficials back in. So yes, ants may have killed the original poster's tree.