Drought killing fire ants?

Sprinkle some corn meal on their mounds and around. They take it down to their nest and the corn meal kills their eggs (or so I've heard). I know if an armadillo is anywhere around they will dig as deep as they can to get to those dead eggs. There is a fly that is a natural predator to the fire ants.

All this heat is keeping the ticks at bay also. As well as many other pest. I've noticed that I don't have near the amount of ants that I usually fight with in our house. And in early spring the ticks were really bad in our yard. Now I can walk anywhere in the yard and I don't get any ticks.

However, where ever you walk throughout our yard, the grasshoppers willl be thrashing out in front of you everywhere. They make good fish bait tho!

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r.h. in oklahoma

Raised a country boy, and will die a country boy.

My grasshoppers and wasps are taking swimming lessons in the dog water. They're slow learners.

1- fire ants reduced our tick problem.

2- AL fire ants are less grumpy than TX ones. I attribute this to them being less thirsty but maybe it's a different strain of them. (So less grumpy that when I tried to rescue a baby bird I was able to remove all the fire ants while holding the ant covered bird in my hand.)

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US Army veteran, military retiree spouse, and military; civilian; British NHS; and VA doctor.