Fire ants with crawl on your legs, but won't immediately start stinging. Once there's a couple of hundred on you, the leader blows a tiny bugle. THEN , they all start stinging at the same time.
Well, we just need to take their bugles away. Problem solved! Just kidding. My dad walked through a fire ant colony, down in Florida. His legs were covered in sting marks. Very bad.
I used to live in Round Rock Texas and had fire ants really bad until the old farmer down the road told me that all you need is a shovel...and he was right. You dig up a couple shovels full from one ant mound and dump it on another. After about three days there will be no ants left. Each mound will fight to the death. It worked for me and I probably had 20 mounds of them.
Ants will not cross cinnamon, so you could probably rub cinnamon onto the shovel hadle to keep them at the far end. This forced ant warfare is worth a try.
I'm in s. Louisiana & I knock away the mound that's above ground & then pour boiling water into the nest. I watch it for a few days to see if anymore mounds appear, if they do then more boiling water is added. Its been working for me for years.
Depending on the sub soil structure and density where you are, a fire ant bed can be SEVERAL feed under ground. I have read about them being found 8 feet deep on a construction site.
Any mound I have sprinkled this stuff on, has become vacant within a week when I check back. Since I’ve been using this, I find myself chasing mounds around the yard less and less. In the past I felt the mounds just moved from place to place. Not anymore. I was suspect of the product at first but since using it this spring and into summer, I definitely don’t have fire any beds in my garden anymore. Just eliminating smaller beds within my yard. Nothing like what I was using before.
Yes, it makes them move. If they survive bait, they will never eat it again, but will move. This can be a good thing, because once they move 3-4 times they will starve. You don't have to kill them, just a tiny amount of product that will make them move will eventually starve them out.
@@glennhubbard5008 Little bastards. I have 2 acres that I maintain. I get bit around my ankles every Summer because I wear quarter socks. The marks finally disappear by Spring, just in time to get bit again and marked up.
@@kevingray8616 I have two acres, also. I treat every mound I find immediately. Also along my road and the local cemetery! I worry our local fields and meadows will become like the horse pastures I saw in eastern Texas about fifteen years ago.
Not every mound has a queen. That's why bait works so well. If you bait 1 mound and the workers carry it to other connected mounds 10-50 feet away, 1 of them may be the queen mound and all the satellite mounds will die of old age.
40 years in FL. orlando i use gas poor it slow right in the middle of hill , let the gas work it way down , then 2 min later light it you will see the hill burn and smoke come out of all mounds that are part of there hive ps 8 to 12 oz of gas works great
A fire ant colony consists of several mounds, usually within a 50' radius, and usually have 1 queen. The workers distribute the eggs and larvae from the queen's mound to the other mounds. Bait will still kill the queen because the workers will carry it a long way to the queen if necessary. Problem with baits: When some workers and the queen survive the bait, the entire colony will never again take the bait, and will simply move the mound. You can take advantage of this by poisoning all the mounds you can find in a colony. When the colony is strong with plenty of warmth and food, they can move several times and survive. When the weather is cool (below 65F) and/or wet and food is scarce, they can't move but about twice and will die out. Keep the pressure up on all mounds in the colony by treating all mounds in cool wet weather and the entire colony will starve out.
I keep this come snd get it on my ranger. Everytime I see a mound and the weather is good I scrape the top off the mound snd sprinkle it on top. After a few days the ants are gone!!
What some people did when they found a fire ant bed was to take a shovel and scoop up a bunch of dirt and fire ants. Quickly find another mound, kick the mound to stir them up and dump your shovel of fire ants on them. They think they are being invaded and within a few hours they are all dead. If you have a few hundred acres of fire ants you may get really tired of doing this.
He speaks the truth. I’m 70 and grew up in South Georgia and these ants are the scourge. In the 60s we had this stuff, Mirex, killed them in hours. One teaspoon was it. Now it’s gone nothing comes close.
I agree.My old neighbor passed away recently and he had cases of dursban in his shed that he stockpiled when they banned it. I'm good to go for the rest of my life.
Worse problem is when people mow their grass they run over the mounds blowing them further out so more mounds will start I keep a gallon of fire ant spray when mowing
This warfare is like getting rid of wasps and hornets. If you kill the queen early in the spring, you're not likely to have a problem later. If you don't get the queen, the colony will keep going on.
Please share how you find and kill the queen in a wasp nest. I'm sick of battling them. I've tried hanging brown paper bags (so they think another colony is already here), I've tried soaping water, I've tried the commercial wasp sprays, etc. It knocks them back but they're still around so I obviously haven't found the queen.
get a metal hand held rake. stir the top. you will motivate thousands of them. take the torch to them. then do it every few days. then you can put DE down, but DE, does not discriminate. The torch appears to work better then DE. It's like they can stay underground, until the rain mixes the DE with the clay, and they recover quickly, and the nest has not moved.
I am trying "come and get it 2" in my garden this season. Ants have become a terrible problem. I lost all of my potatoes to ants eating the stems and feeding on the sap. I just planted my okra and the ant do love young okra pods and flowers. The zipper peas will be planted soon and the ants "farm" the aphids. I think my back yard garden has become one huge ant bed.
Hundreds of fireant colonies on my 5 acres. When I use Amdro it all disappears in an hour or two then I see a tiny sign on the mound that says SEND MORE AMDRO PLEASE. The colony gets bigger.
Definitely going to give this a try. Whatever I purchased a Lowes that I had to chase with water worked but the ants basically moved eventually. When I was a kid in Florida we had huge mounds in our backyard and my dad would just dump gasoline on them. That’s a “sure fire” way to kill the little buggers.
If you go to the Brookfield Museum in Chicago Illinois, they have a whole display of fire ants in a nest and they teach their school children about these things. They are all over Chicago Illinois now.
@@donnajean9805 interesting! we got the imported fire ants here in North Texas back in the 80s. They have been gradually making their way up to the north. But I didn’t realize they got as far north as Chicago. I read that’s too cold for them up there. Apparently they adapted. They used to be very aggressive when we first got them here but they’ve calmed down a little. They LOVE to get into an electrical things like relays in air conditioners by the way, so beware! Sorry you got ‘em!
I just about eliminated fire ants from my property (23.5 acres) by using and pumping NOx into the bed,this said I firmly believe that it's impossible to entirely eliminate these varmints permanently, but very possible to control them on your property.
I don't know if it'll work, I just think you're nice. Gosh a yellow humming bird just bumped into the house! I'm sitting on the porch, my swim is abandoned, my feet and ankles have stinging red welts and I hate fire ants, but I like your video. Thanks.
Always had good results with just soakin em in charcoal starter or lawn gas and letting it soak in before making a containment circle about 5 feet out and setting it up. Fire ain't the best solution, but danged if it don't work.
As a seasoned camper I learned that using either used or fresh coffee grinds on and around 🐜 ants. I used “used coffee grinds” on a fire ant mound at a campground and didn’t see an ant for days. The acidity is something ants don’t like.
When I lived in Arizona when they showed up I used Amdro, It is like candy to them and gets fed to the Queen No heavy poison but kills the ants and queen
Fipronil spray works great, use a metal stick to dig down & help the liquid get down to the queen. Have tried orange oil & detergent with reasonable success, but sometimes need to retreat.
Thanks for sharing. We see a fire ant bed we put our chicken on them. They go to town eating them. We rack the mound down so they all can have some ants. It has made a huge difference in our fields. It sure make our 🐔 happy scratching around for more ants.
My chickens must be too dumb for that. My run has tons of fire ants and the chickens seem oblivious. They just coexist. Ants even get in the coop when an egg gets busted and not one chicken defends their territory
My hens don't want any part of eating ants! They will run the opposite direction, thus I'm left to come up with solutions that are also safe for the hens. I'm trying DE and hope it will work. I have a massive mound at the original coop....(the hens moved on up to fancier digs), so it's like the ants knew it had been vacated. 😵💫
Chronic exposure of adult virgin females to low doses of spinosad leads to mitochondrial defects, severe neurodegeneration, and blindness. These deleterious effects of low-dose exposures warrant rigorous investigation of its impacts on beneficial insects
I have covered mounds with weeds from my garden and they seemed to consume them and mound dirt back up. After a couple times they seemed to disappear. I had another much bigger mound in another garden so I did the same thing except I thoroughly covered it with poke salad leaves. They were gone in 3 days. I have used sulfur and Epsom salts with good success! Also urine does well but it takes about 5 or 6 treatments over several days. Combining these treatments is a pretty sure thing and they go quickly like just 2 days in some cases.
What is this witchcraft?! You are saying you put what on fire ants - weeds? Just putting weeds on them, or salad (food) leaves on them made them vacate? I have never heard of this. How does this work?
@@cra2cra226 that is poke salad or poke weed. It is edible but it has to be blanched a few times to remove most of the toxins. No magic, just experimentation.
don't get mad with me but this took me back a ways to a job I was installing for a client in Fla and they came in on a root ball on a tree i was planting and they got on me . well I had a meeting with the owner and the builder and the both arrived on site and i got off my New Holland and approached the two and right as i got close it happened ! one of the large headed red ants had hid in my shorts and to make it worse on my what you ma call it and bit into me like a pit bull catchin a hawg ! oh Hell no ! and I ran to the back yard and pulled my pants off and they were perplexed untill I showed em the culprit ! true story ! they know just when to bite you , and good !
When there's a sufficient number on your legs, the leader blows a tiny bugle, letting everyone know it's time to attack. The real reason is that their legs are laying a trail of chemicals, when the concentration reaches a certain level, they know it's time to begin the attack.
Very useful info, Thanks! I lost half of my potatoes this year to ants. Question for you, im in North Florida and im 38, an older gentleman i know (85) keeps mentioning a small ear flint corn from when he was younger but doesnt know the name. He said the ears were usually laee than 7-8" long. Any idea what type it may have been?
Not sure, we carry a Indian Flour Corn that is a flint. Click link below to browse our pictures hosstools.com/product-category/premium-garden-seeds/corn-field/
Is it safe to put in your vegetable beds? Right now I use a dilute solution of orange oil and dawn, and flood the mound, followed by an additional gallon of water. It works pretty well, but it has damaged a couple of plants over the years. This sounds interesting.
I hate to contradict you, Greg, but when I moved into my house over 8 years ago it didn’t take long to learn that I had a huge fire ant problem in my yard. The first time I mowed the back yard, I walked straight through a huge mound and both my legs were covered with fire ants; the pain from the stings was so bad I may as well have been on fire. Throughout my first year, I dusted about a dozen good sized mounds with DE and each time within a couple of hours, they went away. I’m assuming they died off, but all I can attest to is that the mound was rendered virtually inactive. Once in a while I’ll happen onto a new mound, but that happens less and less each year. Once I found an ant mount had grown completely over my septic aerator. I dusted it immediately and by the next day, I scooped the dirt from around and on the top of the aerator and saw not one ant. I think the trick (for me) is to excite the ant activity by running a stick over the top and sides of the mound...(this seems to bring many more ants up to the surface) and then blast them with the DE. Every time I’ve done it this way (including inside storage units where I used to work), the ants either go away or die. Not sure which it is, but so long as the conditions are absolutely dry, I’ve had great luck with DE.
I’ve seen more and more ant mounds piling up in every neighbor’s yard (they do absolutely nothing to treat their ant issues) and now it’s infested my yard front and back and I have two dogs who love to roll in the grass and nap under the tree right where we’ve had issues of them accumulating. Anyways I saw some other farmers using DE and it seemed to work for them too. I think he’s right, depending on the size, you might have to do several de treatments to kill ‘em or use what he uses and kill them the first time but I applied the de after stirring them up and they immediately freaked and almost disappeared under the dust. I’ve kept an eye out and only a few bigger ants here and there are trying to escape or it could be the ones that were already out foraging coming back to find their home covered. I’ll keep applying it till their gone, seems to be working in just hrs
What brand did you use? I bought some based on advice like this and then while reading the fine print on the back label, I noticed that it says, "kills ants (excluding fire ants)." Well, having paid for it anyways, I sprinkled it all over a bunch of mounds. A day or two later, I can see that they moved from those mounds, but set up new mounds just inches away, sometimes actually touching (adjacent to) the original (now white) mounds. I suppose I could buy another bag and keep chasing them a few inches every 2 or 3 days, but I don't have the time for that. Maybe you bought a fire-ant-specific brand?
@@cra2cra226the way the DE works is the tiny sharp granules in it put holes in the ant’s exoskeleton. Supposedly, if you put a ring around the mound, they will not walk over it and will starve. But I don’t know about other connected underground tunnels with other entrances…
Going to order some fire ant bait. I’ve tried several commercial and home remedies and they keep coming back. I’m in NE California and have lots of them. I happen to have an identical sink in my greenhouse. Came out of a commercial building we bought in 95’. The building is over 100 years old and was supposed to have been a bar downstairs and a whore house upstairs back in the day. It is a very heavy sink and took me awhile to mount it and build a base for it. Never thought I’d see another one!
Sir, you are wrong about the north not having fire ants, we may not have the southern fire ants, but we do have the European Fire ants, and these things can really sting. And the worst part is, they don't build mounds, so you never know where you may run into a colony.
The only thing about killing the queen, if fire ants are like bees, if the queen dies then the honey bees can create another queen by feeding royal jelly to a cell that has a bee larvae in it. They draw that cell out and then they have another queen bee! Bees are amazing creatures, and I’m pretty sure that ants aren’t far behind them!
Not sure ants create another queen, maybe so. However, if you treat the mounds in cool and/or wet weather, they probably won't. In cool or wet weather, they are struggling to survive and using all their energy to move the mound away from the treated area.
I saw something a long time ago where a university (Florida?) had come up with a method of using a long wand and high temperature steam to kill fire ants. So I started using boiling water in my yard for both ants and weeds. I didn't want my dog to step in any chemicals and then lick his paws. It may take a couple of times but the ants die or move on.
You’re passing out misleading and even some wrong information. In Texas we have several species of native fire ants. The ones that give the problem are the imported fire ants. Also imported fire ants have morphed into multi-queen colonies. The single queen colonies have mostly disappeared. Some bates that are relatively harmless are carried to the queen by the workers because of their characteristic of constant mutual grooming. It would be a good idea to do a little more reading and research before producing a RU-vid presentation on a subject.
@@JasonHolody76 Just like we can have Europeans and Native Americans here in this country at the same time. Did you not read the full comment I left? There are three or four species of fire ants in Texas. Only one of which is the imported variety - it was brought to the United States through Georgia in a shipment of nursery plants around 1930. The native varieties were already here. There were wars and uprising, and soon the imported fire ants prevailed as they subdued most the native species, although there are presumably still remnants of native fire ants still living on their respective reservations today.
We sadly have a HUGE amount of mounds in our yardage of topsoil that was left in our backyard from when they were building our property Otherwise this soil would be useable but one of the mounds is HALF AS TALL AS I AM. no joke. It’s like the 2.5 foot tall mound of soil is FULL of the ants
How far north are they not a problem? My grandparents had a little spread with fenced in pastures with about half a dozen red ant hills and they were agressive. This was outside of Reed City, Michigan, quite a ways north in the lower peninsula.
I have discovered a fire ant mound just inside a tree trunk! When I have treated the ground around the tree, it seems they retreated up into the tree. I pulled some of the bark off and saw them. Any recs for something liquid I can spray onto the tree? I used Spectricide Mound destroyer which does work well, but I can't get dry product onto a vertical surface.
Taking your recommendation, Greg. These South Carolina fire ants ain’t gonna know what hit ‘em. Also, double wheel hoe has been a game changer and a back saver for me. Appreciate y’all and what you do!
i hope its dog safe. I've tried all those methods . as well as making borax and sugar baits, using other store bought baits, and my most recent try was boiling lemon peels and using the liquid to pour in the beds. so far the boiled lemon peel method works well, it seems to have worked. but I have many fire ant mounds that regularly pop up every where
I purchased "Come & Get it" because of your recommendation. I followed the directions and I'm sorry to say it did not work. I have a few large hills and many small ones. Put flag stakes on those treated to return 1 1/2 weeks later without any success. Spent $27. I normally pour boiling water on the hills multiple times, looks like I'm back to the old method.
I used this product in a big container that used to be a 55 gallon barrel(cut in half) which has a lid. We've had alot of rain, but since I had a lid, I thought I'd try it and cover it before it rained again. That was four days ago, I tapped on the lid and ants came crawling out. I hope this eventually works because I've boiled them, used DE, and tried the borax-sugar bait to no avail. I usually plant tomatoes or squash in these containers, so I don't want to use anything not safe for vegetables. The fire ants are so bad that just the slightest movement brings thousands to the surface.
The ants evolve to become resistant. Even if the product you’re selling works right now it’s not gonna work for long. Bowling water is it possible to develop resistance to
How do you know that a particular ant colony is fire ants? I’m new to TX, and am starting to notice ant nests here and there around my house. Will this product control all types of ants? Isn’t there anything cheaper but as effective? Inquiring minds want to know! 🙂
If you disturb a fire ant mound enough...they don't move far but they will relocate. They're on to a lot of the poison baits and they will leave the area if you treat it with say....Amdro. problem is...the birds, rabbits, and ground squirrels. Mice. Rats etc. Quail. Chukars....so when using ant baits....do it at night. In deserts? Nightime is when fire ants will forage.
Im a pest control technician i pulled over on the side of the road to make phone calls and there was a cow pasture next to where i parked and i counted 34 fire ant mounds just sitting in my truck rite ther i thought to myself those poor cows you know they walk rite into those i dont know how thick the cows skin is so i dont know if they actually feel it but i feel bad for them if they feel it
@@gardeningwithhoss kinda like honey bees? If so, I wonder if there’s a scent they favor like bees. I know that carpenter ants can scent moist wood and are attracted to it.
Listen, take some ants from one mound, and put them onto another mound .. video tape it .. its crazy😂😂😂😂😂😂 Kinda cold blooded I know but, that's what ants do anyways
