Fire ants in garden and lawn

14 years ago

I received an email from a friend in Mississippi with the following message. Mississippi is over run with fire ants and there seems to be no way to control them. When they first arrived, you could put in poison to kill the queen and the colony would die. Now they have adapted so that if the queen dies, they elect a new queen from 144 nominees-in-waiting and the colony continues. If this method stated in the email works, it will be wonderful. We have fire ants here in my area just South of Norman but they are more in the under populated areas and open fields. David Jay Perry Airport here in Goldsby is over run with them and they even have mounds right up next to the runway and get in the runway lights. I copied and pasted the entire email for everyone to read and possibly try. Anyone else heard about this?

You folks that don't live in the south don't know what you're missing.

> >> UGA ANNOUNCES NEW INEXPENSIVE TWIST TO KILLING FIRE ANTS

> >> For those not familiar with

> >> Walter Reeves, he is from the University of Georgia agriculture

> >> department, specializing in home gardening. His television show,

> >> 'Gardening in Georgia ', is on each Saturday.

> >>

> >> I know fire ants are picky eaters and any type poison that is effective

> >> takes seven feeding steps before the queen receives it.

> >> Plus, if the bait is stored in close proximity to any petroleum or

> >> fertilizer products they won't touch it. Contact poisons that are on the

> >> market just cause the colony to move away. A well developed colony can be

> >> as deep as 30 feet and spread out some 20 to 50 feet from the mound

> >> center... This was documented by studies done in the early 60's when they

> >> were first sited in South Alabama ..

> >>

> >> An environmentally friendly cure for fire ants has been announced by

> >> Walter Reeves on his Georgia Gardener radio program. Testimonials that it

> >> REALLY WORKS are coming in.

> >>

> >> Simply pour two cups of CLUB SODA (carbonated water) directly in the

> >> center of a fire ant mound. The carbon dioxide in the water is heavier

> >> than air and displaces the oxygen which suffocates the queen and the

> >> other

> >> ants. The whole colony will be dead within about two days.

> >>

> >> Besides eliminating the ants, club soda leaves no poisonous residue, does

> >> not contaminate the ground water, and does not indiscriminately kill

> >> other

> >> insects. It is not harmful to your pets, soaks into the ground. Each

> >> mound

> >> must be treated individually and a one liter bottle of club soda will

> >> kill

> >> 2 to 3 mounds.

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Comments (3)

faerybutterflye
14 years ago
That is a brilliant idea! I will definitely have to try it this summer when they invade my yard and/or containers!

~*Natasha*~
avidchamp
Original Author
14 years ago
Well, sorry folks but the thing that I posted about killing fire ants by giving them a drink of club soda seems to be another hoax. I received an email from someone giving a website that shows it to be a hoax.
Hopefully this website will appear so you can copy and paste it to go look at it. I guess we can all still hope for something to control them. The following site goes right in after the http and the two slashes
insectsinthecity.blogspot.com/2010/01/club-soda-for-your-ants-sir.html
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I successfully rid my yard of them by using the following: 2 oz of Garrett Juice (sold in Dallas, it's mostly molasses from the smell) and 2 oz of orange oil to 1 gallon of water. Pour it on the mound, kind of slowly so that it doesn't run off but seeps into the holes of the colony. Use the water to keep the keep the ants from coming to you. Within a few hours you can tell if there's activity on the mound. Slow, dying ants aren't a problem, but vigorous activity is. Drench it again. Big mounds might take a third application. Caveats: orange oil will kill plant roots, so don't use more than 2 oz on any one spot. Change the mixture to only 1 oz of orange oil if you think you will need more than 1 application. Also, big colonies will start other mounds quickly, so watch for them and treat sooner rather later. Eventually, you will get control--I did and haven't had a problem for 3 years. There is usually 1 attempt to start a colony each spring, but after treating it, nothing else. I used boiling water a couple of times and it does work, but it is hard to carry boiling water and it kills the plant roots. Diatomeceous earth (not for swimming pool use but for garden use) will kill them (and other bugs, too, good or bad), but it takes a really long time to get the whole colony. You can shovel the colony into a bucket and then kill them however you like. Dust the shovel handle and the bucket rim with baby powder--the ants can't crawl through it. Hope this helps!!
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I checked the coverage on the bag when I bought it, and I agree, they don't add much inert ingredients to their product, which would lead people to over-apply it, costing way more than necessary. I am already seeing results, whooppee. Got bitten one time outside today, compared to the covering of bites on my feet the last while every time I ventured out to garden. I didn't know the Amdro has a short shelf life, though. Thanks for alerting me. I hope the product I bought is still effective to do the job. The corner lot here has a very large frontage, but nothing compared to what your friend has to deal with. I can't imagine having that kind of maintenance - those buggers have been out to kill me this year! jeribelle
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I have similar problems with killing fire ants in my containers. None of the home remedies worked for me. Amdro probably would not be bad since it is a bait but can take up to three weeks to kill the mound. That would allow too much time for the ants to do damage. The last thing I used was Sevin. Yes, many people do not like it but it has been around a long time and is approved for gardens. I just sprinkled it around the mound in the container and also where they were coming into the container (it was on the ground). It seems to have killed the entire mound. I watered a couple of days later and no ants came out. Spinosad would work but is hard to find and more expensive than sevin. I had quit using sevin since it is so hard on bees and I have ingested enough when I use to use it on dogs. Does not work good on ticks but at the time was about all there was. It was before the various skin spot treatments came out. When I dusted the dogs, me and the dogs got covered. Never had any side effects but still not good. Dusting on the mound seems much safer.
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Okiedawn OK Zone 7
14 years ago
Darn it. You figured it out before I got on the computet his morning, so I didn't have a chance to hoot and holler and say "No-o-o-o! Don't fall for this garbage." This hoax has been around for several years.

For the record, anytime someone posts something about a "new miracle solution" for anything in gardening, there is a 99.99% chance it is a hoax or is something that is just flat-out ridiculous. Most of these so-called solutions have floated around for years and have been debunked. When I come across a new one I haven't heard before, I go to Snopes.com to see if they address it on their website, and they often do.

As far as fire ants, I've been dealing with them since they first appeared in our part of Texas in the late 1970s or early 1980s. While we have better methods of managing them now, there still are few organic solutions that really seem to work. The one that works best for me is anything with Spinosad. It doesn't take out all the fire ants, but it greatly reduces their numbers.

I don't even worry much about fire ants any more because, like cockroaches and rats and snakes, they are here to stay. I just try to keep their mounds out of my veggie garden and out of the areas where we commonly walk.

The big ant worry now for all of us now in this part of the country is Rasberry Crazy Ants. They are real, they do exist, and the scientists and researchers in Texas (and probably elsewhere) are just beginning to study them. I hope they figure out a way to manage them before these ants make it this far north.

Dawn

Here is a link that might be useful: Crazy Rasberry Ants Wiki

Fire ants in garden and lawn

Comments (3)

faerybutterflye

avidchamp
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Fire ants in garden and lawn

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faerybutterflye

avidchampOriginal Author

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avidchamp
Original Author