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Fire Ant ControlDon't get burned by fire ants. Skip has a few tips. |
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Transcript: Fire Ants
Fire ants can spoil an otherwise enjoyable outing out in the lawn or landscape. In fact, I remember one painful experience working in a peach orchard in Louisiana, I was pruning on some trees and didn't discover the ant bed I was standing in until they were well up my pants leg. I had to shed those pants and it was quite an unforgettable experience. In fact, I suspect they're some folks in Louisiana still trying to forget.Seriously, fire ants are really not that difficult to control if you follow a simple two-step solution. First of all, you apply a bait in a very low rate all over your property. It's even better if your neighbors also apply the bait. The ants take the bait down into the colony, feed it to the other ants and the queen, and you kill most of the colonies in your yard.
The second step is to use a contact or mound treatment to individually catch the mounds you miss with the bait.
It's important to start with the bait first because there are mounds that you can't see that haven't boiled to the surface, if you will, and if you just go around treating individual mounds, you'll never catch up to the problem.
Talk to your local county Extension agent. They have free publications that will guide you along the way. There are both synthetic and organic options for both bait and contact treatments, so there's a solution for everyone.
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Last Updated:
July 6, 2006