Fire Ant Help Please!!!

[Wilbursmommy]

Ok, the fire ants are winning and it's only March! We easily have 100+ hills. We are getting 2 goats and some chicks in 2 weeks and I need to get rid of these things without contaminating my well. I try to use everything organic when I can, but alot of the remedies I have come across are not working. The nests are so deep, the DE barely fazes them. At $10 a bag, and 2 acres to treat, my budget says . I'm going to try a Borax remedy tomorrow.

Anybody who knows electrical, please advise. My grandpa used a device in Wisconsin to make nightcrawlers come shooting out of the ground. I want to make one and try on the ant hills since ants are attracted to electricity, but DH says no I will kill myself. Grandpa used a copper rod and attached an electrical cord to the end with electrical tape. He wet the ground, pushed the rod in, plugged in the end to an extention cord, walked short distance to house and plugged in. In seconds, night crawlers were all over the place. He unplugged and we scooped them up for the next days fishing. Since fire ants cheerfully commit harikari with electrical devices here, I figured one or two of these rods shoved into the ant hill or on each side of it, would make short work of the hill, possibly even getting the queen. But, if enough of the worker ants are killed the queen will die anyway. I do not want to kill myself, though.

I tried boiling about 8 large pans of water and pouring on the hills closest to the house, but that was time consuming, used too much energy from the stove, and just isn't practical to treat 2 acres.

So, anyone have any ideas?

[myheaven]

I tried all the "organic" methods after 2 years of trying i just went for the chemicals. They are gone with one try and the HUGE hills has been destroyed. I hope someone else can figure out something I hate chemicals and at 8 bucks a bottle Id rather do something else.

[vicker]

Fire ants can be real hard too control, as I am sure you know (thank God we don't have them here in WV). Any home remedy you use is probably only goig to kill some of the worker ants and not the queen. You have to kill them all. I used to care take several cemeteries in S. Carolina, and one in particular had hundreds of fire mounds. The county extension agent told me to use liquid Sevin, to use a broom handle or some such rod and poke a hole deep down into the nest and wiggle it to make a funnel shaped hole, then to pour the Seven in. I treated well over 300 mounds and killed every one of them.
That was back in the 1980's. Now there are better ways to treat for fire ants. Unfortunatly, I am not familar with them anymore. This is a good case for you to discuss with your county extension agent. I am sure there is a safe method that won't harm your well. You surely want to rid your field of them before you place anmals in there. You could treat them with boiling water, but that would take quite a bit of boiling water (don't you think?).
You don't need a remedy, you need a fix.

[Natalie11]

When I lived in Alabama I used to take two 5 Gallon buckets, I would get two shovels full of ants in each bucket and dump them in the opposite hill. It was an admirable war, usuall ending in the death of both hills.

While time consuming for large acreage, it might work.


Good Luck.

[donsgal]

I am told that if you put out aspartame mixed with enough water to make it damp and placed in a container near a hill, that it will kill all ants including fire ants. I have not tried this and do not know if it is true, but it is worth a shot, I would think.

donsgal

[AngieM2]

An older N Carolina friend told me soap on ant hills will make them go away.

Like dish liquid soap, or cheap shampoo. I've tried it some on regular large black ants and they departed. Just an idea for you.

Angie

[suburbanite]

You need to track down these people and beg them to continue their research on your land as a research site:

http://agnet.tamu.edu/stories/Fire%20ants'%20enemy.html

[Columbia,SC.]

I think Clemson University came up with a ivory dish soap and water method, I have done it and it will work but I forget the mixture now. The soap washes away the ants wax or oils and they die. I could look for the link or you could try google and see what you get, it does work, the ivory, I was not being a smart alleck about google,lol. I have also used a brodcast granual with great results and little $.

[Paul Wheaton]

A couple of weeks ago I saw a fantastic presentation where a guy is a bit of a nut about fungus. As part of his presentation he talked about how he had a terrible carpenter ant problem. Then he fed one of his funguses to the ants - they loved it - and then it killed them all! He has since conducted tons of experiments and then patented this. It sounds like it is going to soon be the king solution!

I found an article: http://www.newfarm.org/depts/talking...a_tilth1.shtml scroll to the bottom.

[SteveD(TX)]

There is a product called "Extinguish" that is relatively inexpensive and effective. You can order it here:

http://www.pestproducts.com/extinguish.htm

[culpeper]

Check this out:

http://www.abc.net.au/catalyst/stories/s1853271.htm

[sidepasser]

Originally Posted by donsgal

I am told that if you put out aspartame mixed with enough water to make it damp and placed in a container near a hill, that it will kill all ants including fire ants. I have not tried this and do not know if it is true, but it is worth a shot, I would think.

donsgal

That does work and you really don't need to wet it, just dump two packets per hill on them - the ants eat the stuff, carry it down to the nest and at the end of the day - dead hill.

We buy the dollar general sweetner..just make sure the day isn't windy or the stuff will blow away, I treat the mounds mid morning. Next day I can kick the mound, dead ants..depends on how big the mound is, might need more than two packets. Works as well as any chemicals I've used.

[Terri]

Do fire ants like sweets?

I have been known to mix honey with boric acid. The sweet eating ants eat it, and the boric acid is only poisenous to insects.

[YuccaFlatsRanch]

The new Fire Ant Baits we use here in Texas are not specifically a POISON, they are a bait (i.e. food) that the ants eat and contain a substance that is a growth inhibitor that kills off the colony safely. I wouldn't doubtthey use sometiing like Imidocloprid.

In either case my free roaming chickens take care of all of my mounds.

[texican]

Learn to embrace the fire ant! There is no cure for the ailment, just bandaids... Nothing will keep them away forever, except massive continual dosing of toxic chemicals.

My free range guineas and chickens keep the mounds under control. Currently I have three mounds in a ~1 acre area around the house. One mound next to a big rock, one next to a post, one under a barrel...places the guineas/chickenss can't scratch around and disturb the nests.

Try not to kill em all... leave a nest far enough away from the house to not be troublesome... these nests will keep new nests from forming...when the queens swarm, the local ants will kill all of the 'foreign' queens. If you were to kill all of the ants, after the first swarm, you'd be back to square one, with a maximum coverage of nests... like I said earlier, you must learn to embrace the fireant...or learn to embrace (ingest) poison...

[Alice In TX/MO]

I like Amdro if the ants are close to the house. Farther out, I favor Orthene. Stinks like rotten sauerkraut, but it works overnight and doesn't take but a couple of teaspoons for each mound. Lowe's has it.

[Tricky Grama]

I've done this & it works!

You will need orange oil & liquid molasses-feed grade from farm store, & compost tea.

1st make the compost tea. Put about a qt of compost in a leg of pantyhose & dunk it in a big bucket of water. This will take a couple days to make tea.

Mix equal amounts of orange oil, liquid molasses & compost tea together. Add about 6 oz of this to a gallon of water. Add a little liquid saop to make things mix well. Dump it on the fire ant mounds.

Now every time I see a new one, I sprinkle dry molasses on it & they leave. The orange oil is what kills them, tho.

Patty

[Ark]

Originally Posted by YuccaFlatsRanch

In either case my free roaming chickens take care of all of my mounds.

LUCKY YOU!!!!!!!!!

My MANY chickens and guineas do not control the fire ants on our place. Maybe they do eat some, I dont know, but they certainly DONT keep them under control!

Our garden was eaten by fire ants last year, so I have GOT to find a solution that wont kill the chickens and guineas but WILL kill the fire ants.

[Ken Scharabok]

Non-organic, but about two gallons of diesel with about 10% gasoline in it dumped on a mount got rid of them for me.

[GrannyG]

Similar to the above post, they have been running this on TV this week to kill them

2 TBSP orange oil
2 TBSP molasses
1 gallon water
Mix and pour on mound