Fire Ants

Fire ants live in many of the warmer parts of the world and in the majority of countries and in the majority of languages, from Thai to French and English, the word ‘fire’ is part of its name. This is because the sensation of pain after having been stung, not bitten, by one of these ants is like the pain suffered from a burn.

Most ants that produce pain in humans bite first and then spray acid into the cut, but fire ants bite in order to get a hold and then sting with the body. The substance that they inject is an alkaloid venom which is agonizing to humans.

It is also an insecticide and some observers think that the nurse-worker fire ants spray this toxin over the eggs to prevent infection. Fire ants are easily distinguished by their red to copper-brown heads and dark to black bodies. They are between two and six millimeters in length and their mandibles or jaws look like jagged garden secateurs.

Fire ants build nests in the ground and often build up big mounds of earth, although sometimes this is concealed by a fallen tree of a pile of vegetation. The nests can be five feet deep and the mounds over a foot above ground. They prefer moist to damp ground, so the colonies can often be found on the banks of a river, on the edge of a pond or on a well-watered lawn. The nests are founded by one or more queens and can very rapidly mature to thousands of ants.

If you have fire ants in your house or garden, you will almost certainly want to get rid of them. This is not so hard, but if you do not annihilate every colony, then one of two surviving queens can produce a new nest of thousands of ants in about a month. There are plenty of poisons to kill ants on the market, and if you want to try an almost guaranteed chemical ant killer, pick one of those.

Otherwise you may want to try one of the following home treatments.

Nematodes are very small insects that live in damp soil. They eat other insects including ants. You can purchase nematodes in a garden center or on line. Combine them with rain, not tap water, because chlorine will kill them, then pour this water into the nest. The nematodes will have wiped out the ants within about two weeks. This is a wholly green way of killing fire ants.

Some people rely on club soda. Pour a bottle of club soda into the colony, the gas that the soda produces is said to kill the queen and the reproductive ants.

Soapy water is also supposed to kill ants. Use the same bowl of soapy washing up water and tip it into the colony, the soap is believed to kill them outright.

Boric acid is repellent to ants, so you can sprinkle it around the foundation of your house and around the nest.

There are quite a few natural methods of getting rid of fire ants, if you want to learn more, go to www.completepestcontrolservices.com.