I use Amdro on the bastards but it is so damn expensive, do any of you know another solution that doesnt kill the grass and every other living thing around them??  [grenade]

did you try those little hockey puck traps? hardware stores carry them.

The Amdro is one of your best bets it kills the queen, while most of the other fire ant products just kill individual ants. Are you spreading it according to the directions? The thing about fire ants is you won't really kill them all, you just do the best you can and try to force them to move on to a different area. Don't kick or disturb their mounds either, they will just make a new one or rebuild the existing one.

BMB

Napalm


But there might be some collateral damage.

Regardless of what will be said on this topic this is the only truth. I have only been able to slow them down...in the end they always win. I have learned to never stop too long in any one spot in my yard because they will kick your ass but good.

MAXFORCE Granular Ant Bait.

[url]http://www.maxforce.com/[/url]

It's a professional product that you may find over the counter. If you are near a city of any size look for a LESCO lawn supply center. They will probably sell it to you.

Maxforce is expensive to, but it WORKS! I am in the business and it's the only thing I'll use.

it all depends on your interpituation of the law

Take a can of WD40 with that straw nozzle on it. Stick it in all the diffrent holes on your yard and spray generously. Then stick a match in it! Used to do it for fun when I was little.

HaHa!

I was gonna tell him to get an AOW flame thrower and let them live up to their name.

Ortho Orthene fireant killer is the best short of nuking them I have found. A little bit goes a long way, and they are dead the next day, not just moved on like a lot of the others.
It stinks, but it kills the queen, and the whole mound dies. It can be found pretty much anywhere, and you apply it directly to the mound, no watering either.

I saw this on the anumal planet channel that you can simply urinate on them and it will do the trick, only about twice the guy said.
GG

These little asshole insects have invaded (via cargo ship) Australia, in Queensland, and the govt there is really having a battle.

I wish you luck, I dont think that they can be stopped.

Send them into gang territory.

Sorry, folks, but if Amdro, Dursban, Sevin Dust, or any other chemical pesticide was going to be able to put the quiteus on the fire ant, those little critters would be on the endangered species list about twenty years ago!

But they're not, and the reason for that is that chemical warfare simply does not work against them!  What all the use of chemicals HAS managed to accomplish is to impede, remove or eradicate the 'natural' enemies of the fire ant. I use the term 'natural' in the sense that, since the fire ant is not native to the Southeastern United States, there are some enemies that it has acquired since its arrival.

The main 'adapted' enemy that the fire ant has acquired is simply the common [b]red ant.[/b]

Red ants are voracious predators of the fire ant, and a cupful of red ants placed on a fire ant mound will shortly reduce the mound to zip.  Problem - Amdro, Dursban, Sevin Dust et al., has reduced the red ant population to a mere percentage of its former numbers.

Horned lizards (or 'horny toads' as kids in Texas [u]used[/u] to call them) are also a fearsome predator of fireants, or should I say 'were' as fearsome predator, because the same chemicals used in fruitless attempts to eradicate fireants have taken such a heavy toll on native horny toads that that species is all but extinct East of Interstate 35 in Texas.

As anyone who grew up in Texas can agree, there were such numbers of horny toads thirty years ago, that it was almost impossible to be out of doors in the summer without seeing them in your yard, or running across the streets.

There were always squished horny toads on the highways. You could count on seeing them at least one per mile, on the roads. Not any more!  The only thing that's changed is the
unrelieved use of chemicals in the war against the fireant.

It's time to move on to biological warfare! The introduction of red ants could be accomplished only with the cessation of the use of chemical pesticides. Use only natural pesticides, such as:

*diatomaceous earth (or 'DE', but [u]not[/u] the swimming pool variety, use only the untreated horticulture DE found in organic nurseries)
*orange oil or any citric oil
*compost tea
*dry molassus
*dry seaweed
*beneficial nematodes (microscopic unsegmented worms)

The DE is a white powder composed of the exoskeletons of diatoms (think, small sea shells) that lived millions of years ago. These exoskeletons are extremely sharp and will cut the exoskeletons of fireants, causing them to leak their body fluids uncontrollably, and die!

BTW, DE can also be used in pet and human foods to 'cleanse' digestive tracts. In fact, most organic nurseries sell a product called 'the Missing Link' which is a food additive for humans. Most natural dog foods contain DE.

The orange and citric oils are useful since they help dissolve the fireants' exoskeletons and cause slow and painful death! Payback time!

Try the natural approach to biological war on fireants. It's helped me immensely in getting rid of pests at home and farm.

Eric The('SonOfAggie,ClassOf'49')Hun[>]:)]

What will the dry molasses do, other than rotting the ants' teeth? [?]

I took the Texas A&M fireant school a few years ago and learned a lot about fireants and their control.  Main thing is you can't eradicate them but they can be controlled to a given number of mounds per acre.

There are three kinds of mounds: single-queen, multi-queen and mega-mounds.  Fireants when they arrived from South America would fight among themselves if two or mounds were too close to each other.  Several years ago mounds were found that had separate queens but were interconnected without "warfare".  Subsequently a small number of mounds have been found that have many queens' mounds connected.  Whether these queens are "related" is not known.

Fireants are nocturnally foraging carnivores.  This can be used to their disadvantage.  It is why bait poisons work.  The foraging tunnels are located away from the visible "mound" and do not have telltale "mounding", just a small hole in the ground.  This is why it works best to spread bait poison away from the main mound.

The best control schemes take three steps.  1) Contact poison for local control (around house, sidewalks and swimming pools), 2) Bait poison for large area in-season control (yards and pastures) and 3) Poison that delay the sexual maturity of the queen and drone (these poisons are used for large scale next-season control - they act on the next generation - they are the most efficient poison but take longest to make an effect).

Fireants mate high in the air.  When the queen descends from the mating flight, she will attempt to land at a visibly distinct black-white boundary.  (Fireants are color-blind.)  What appears to be a black-white boundary to a queen is many times a water's edge, a sidewalk or driveway-lawn boundary.  That's why so many fireant mounds are seen in these areas.

So, go with contact poison in high-traffic areas around your home or work (like where small children are present or before a party), bait poison for in-season control and the maturity altering poison for next spring and summer control.

These mindless drones have only one objective: Destroy everything that is good and Holy!

First you must accept the futility in fighting them. After that it is easy, merely submit. You have no chance in victory, take your own life and spare yourself the eventual and assured destruction of our species......


.....I'm sorry. Were we talking about liberals or fireants?

Fire works.  No, not fireworks.

I have used ethanol soaked into the mound to cut the population significantly.  Light it if you want.  A large portion of workers will die making it easier to apply an effective dose of pesticide, natural or not.

Ethanol evaporates making replanting next year possible.

Post from Renamed -

Dry molasses will stimulate microbial activity in the soil, and some of these microbes are almost as much of a problem for fireants as fireants are for us!

For more on the subject of natural pesticides, go to Howard Garrett's website at [url]http://www.dirtdoctor.com/[/url]

Eric The(EverSoHelpful,Maybe)Hun[>]:)]

I use Tero and Diazanon-yes I know, Diazanon causes bbbb b bb b braaaaaa iiiii nn dddddammmage but it works-Dont have much for fire ants up here though-just red and black.  I was fortunate enough to meet the red ant in georgia, when we were doing a ambush we all laied down on a red ant mound (it was night)  never been bit so many times-one guy went to the hospital-the ambush did not work out so well....

Wow, you guys sure know a great deal about ants.

We dont have them up here in Flagstaff, too wet and cold I guess.

I did, however find a very attractive horned lizard in the yard the other day. The short-horned variety with just a tinge of orange on his horns and a yellow/black striping on his back. Very nice looking. I was pleased I didn't "tag" him with the gas-powered line trimmer. Took him in the house and checked him out. Turned him loose where I found him the next day.

D.

Well, you've stepped into my specialty.  You might want to visit this web site.

[url]fireant.tamu.edu[/url]

You need to know about the dynamics of the mound, and what stage of development the mound is in.

Amdro has been around for many years and is an excellent product, as is all fire ant bait materials.  Baits are preferred food sources that destroy the developing mound.  We advise homeowners to broadcast bait over their yard in the spring and in the fall (April-May, September-October).

Baits are only good for 48 hours.  You do NOT  water them in.

We recommend a broascast rate of 1 to 1.5 lbs of Amdro (for example) per acre.  If you have a normal city lawn around 1/4 to 1/3 of an acre, take the 1 pound jug the amdro comes in and use half of it in the spring and the other half in the fall.  Using baits for single mound applications just wastes time and money.  Broadcast applications, though slower, work better with less product.  Because the baits are a preferred food source for fire ants other ants tend to leave them alone.  In other words they are a secondary or tertiary food source.  Also the bait particles are too small or too large for other ants and therefore they do not take them back to their mounds, so their populations are not decreased, only the fire ants mounds are destroyed.

I have over an hour PowerPoint presentation I give to groups about Fire Ant management and it is hard to cover all aspects here.

Maxforce has the same active ingredient that Amdro has.  Amdro is around 0.75% active while Maxforce Fire Ant bait is 1% active.  I use to work for the company that made Amdro and the 1% vs 0.73% is not an issue, but Maxforce (known as Combat in the stores around here since Maxforce is for professionals)has been selling for 1/2 the price of Amdro in my area.  So I would purchase the cheaper.  Same results.  If you have specific questions about broadcast baits, single mound treatments, "organic alternatives", e:mail me at -

[email protected]

Check out the fire ant web site first.  Learn about your enemy.  Fire ants are easy to control!  We just have a hard time managing their numbers.

"when in a pasture there is only two "soft" things you can step into, and neither one is pleasant!"

go rent a Anteater from the zoo [:D]

I am a Pest Control Tech in New Mexico.  This time of year, sometimes it's hard to get fire ants to take any sort of bait due to the monsoon season and all of the swarming that is taking place with most species of ants.  
That said, Maxforce G is great along with Amdro.
Most of the time Amdro works a bit better, but if you use the contact pesticides and other methods (fire, gas, thermonuclear war) you may get temporary relief, but the queen will go into overdrive and produce more workers or another queen so they can continue their way of life.

Honey and whipped cream - that'll learn 'em!