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Guest GiJenn51

A spin off from another ant thread. How in the heck do you tell an army ant from a fire ant? I was mowing the lawn and got bit. The ant wasn't very red, but a week later I still have the bite.

 

 

I know.... welcome to the south....

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Sounds like a fire ant but then I really am not familiar with army ants. :unsure

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Guest argolola

I'm not sure, but my transplanted-from-Ohio roommate at work tells me she pours white vinegar on the ant mound and it kills them, including the queen.

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Guest greybookends

Jennifer I've never heard of army ants in the US but I could be wrong. Most likely what you have are fire ants. What ever you do to get rid of them you have to make sure you get it into the nest so it gets the whole colony otherwise it will just move. I have heard of many different ways to get rid of them and those that recommend them all swear by them. You just need to decide what works best for you. I have heard of pouring boiling salted water on the colony. Use all 4 burners to get four LARGE pots and dump them one after another so it gets all the way into the colony. You can put grits on the colony. I have heard of using Dawn dish soap. There are chemicals as well but if you are like me you will not use them because of the hounds. Good luck we've been trying to get rid of them for years.

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I like to have them kill each other by mixing nests :lol Long handled shovel -but still check handle often- is all you need.

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YUK!!! I don't know much about em but don't like em

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Are they all dead yet??

 

I wish it were only that easy to kill the Cicada Killer Wasps, they are out in full force today.

Major & Black Jack are the BEST Doggies in the WORLD

A Major Presence - MAJOR - March 10, 1999 - January 13, 2011

Little Joe - BLACK JACK - July 31, 1998 - February 8, 2011

 

"If you lead your life the right way, the karma will take care of itself. " - Randy Pausch

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Guest luluaz

Down here in Phoenix, we have bad-a_ _ fire ants, but they are ALL nasty!!

I am constantly getting bitten on my pup walk AARRGG!

I now have a natural cure, from our local"Garden Guy".......take some of those useless "mock" oranges and puree them whole

in a blender, pour the whole mess on top and let the sun do the rest!! It really works, I am very glad to say ;)

Non-toxic, too!

 

 

Lisa

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Guest Snowy8

My sister has fire ants on her land, they've even gotten the horses. I don't know what she sprays but I can find out if you want. She gets it from the Tractor Supply place.

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A spin off from another ant thread. How in the heck do you tell an army ant from a fire ant?

 

Army ants would be wearing cammies and have stripes on their sleeves indicating rank. :rofl Sorry, I just couldn't help myself. :rofl

 

I have tried the homemade recipes suggested with no luck.

 

I buy the fire ant killer from Lowe's or Home Depot. I only put a few grains (about a teaspoon) right near the hill opening. To keep the dogs away I put something on top on the mound like an upsidedown bucket or can. Then I put some wire garden fencing around it so the dogs can't get to it. Within a days or so there is no more activity.

 

With whatever method you use, keep an eye out to see if the colony has moved. Sometimes another colony may pop up 20 feet away.

 

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Jenn, get fire ant killer at your nearest hardware store. The best kind to get for the back yard where the dogs are going to be is the kind you put on and then add water to. The stuff you sprinkle on and leave can be eaten by the dogs. You have to kill the queen to get rid of the ant hill. If the queen doesn't die they just move elsewhere. Keep an eye, you may find that the mound moves from place to place. If you have one, you may have more and just haven't seen them. They hurt like the dickens when they bite too!

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Don't know the terminology but when I was growing up we had "red ants" and "sugar ants". The red ants were big and red (natch) and the sugar ants were little and black. Red ant bites would be red and hurt and itch but not fill with liquid.

 

Enter fire ants. Smaller than red ants (probably your army ants) but their bites get filled with liquid and swell up. They say not to pop the bites but I do to let the clear stuff drain out and it heals way quicker.

Edited by Hubcitypam
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Down here in Phoenix, we have bad-a_ _ fire ants, but they are ALL nasty!!

I am constantly getting bitten on my pup walk AARRGG!

I now have a natural cure, from our local"Garden Guy".......take some of those useless "mock" oranges and puree them whole

in a blender, pour the whole mess on top and let the sun do the rest!! It really works, I am very glad to say ;)

Non-toxic, too!

 

Having been bit by almost every sort of ant- including red imported fire ants (RIFA, as they charmingly call them), the little pi$$-ants out here are nothing in comparison to RIFAs. They leave this wonderful whitehead several days after the bite in many cases.

 

Interestingly, the drought has been tough on them in Texas; Wall Street Journal had an article saying ranchers are asking for ways to improve their numbers. Seems fire ants keep down populations of the other stuff- chiggers, ticks, mites, fleas, and other nasties.

 

Seems to me a few years ago some genius came up with a portable steam generator that had a lance attachment to it. You'd tow it around like a deranged little red wagon, fire it up, and use the steam lance to penetrate the nest. Just stick it in there, and keep working it around to a depth of several feet and cook the ants alive, aiming to kill the queen.

 

No pesticides, low cost, and cheap entertainment! Of course, no residual pesticides, either.

 

ETA: For cheap entertainment value, nothing beats a block of dry ice on a harvester ant mound. The CO2 sets off something in them- presumably that an invader is attacking the nest, breathing out CO2- and they go after it in massive waves. The dry ice freezes them and asphyxiates them, while their cohorts climb over the bodies of the dead to attack the block of dry ice.

 

I never tried this on fire ant nests, but BOY I'd love to know if it works the same!

Edited by ahicks51

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Guest robingrey

Speaking as a Georgian, I don't know that it matters, I think I've been bit by them all and they ALL hurt! Got bitten in my closet just this morning (we were sprayed last week and they said to give it 10 days). I hate ants.

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Well, I generally just assume that its a fire ant and will bite me unless its one of the big black ants. <_< If the ants swarm furiously out of the mound, on the attack, they are fire ants. Check out Fire ant info for good fire ant info.

 

There is a weekly radio program on SC Educational Radio--I think you can get the podcasts at bugs.clemson.edu--by an entomologist and a pesticide regulation specialist. Their advice for the least toxic and most effective way to treat fire ants is to use a broadcast bait a couple of times a year followed by mound treatments if needed. I use Amdro but there are other baits as well. You broadcast a relatively small amount of bait over a fairly large area and, if you put it out when ants are foraging (see web link for info) they will pick up almost all of the bait within a few hours. That leaves nothing for the hounds to get into. I usually treat once in the spring and again later in the summer if I see mounds. I tried putting out the mound treatments that you water in. The problem I had with them was that, even after watering them in, there was product on the mound that Piper tended to get into. The baits solve that problem.

 

Oh and yeah, welcome to the South. :)

Edited by LBass

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Lucy with Greyhound Nate and OSH Tinker. With loving memories of MoMo (FTH Chyna Moon), Spirit, Miles the slinky kitty (OSH), Piper "The Perfect" (Oneco Chaplin), Winston, Yoda, Hector, and Claire.

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Jenn,

unfortunately, you will SOON know for sure what fire ants and their mounds look like, and will learn to avoid them like the plague!!! I'd ask Bill and MC what they use at Casa/Kennel Lambert. They'll know what works and is safest around the hounds.

 

Other than hurricanes and venemous snakes (and the 2nd is up for debate), red ants are my least favorite part of FL. I was a child care teacher when I lived in FL and had a child swarmed by fire ants. We'd taken the entire class (30-35 3-5 yo kids) on a 'field trip' on a city bus to a park across town. We stopped for a rest and one little 3 yo climbed on a boulder to sit. A couple of minutes later he was SCREAMING and swatting at himself (he was not known to be a drama queen).He was covered w fire ants. We had to take all of his clothes off right in the middle of the park.

 

Somehow (AJ Hicks can probably explain), the ants will communicate, work together and move up your body, until several of them are on bare flesh, THEN they start biting. They are just NASTY little !@#$%^^&*!!!!

 

 

 

Having been bit by almost every sort of ant- including red imported fire ants (RIFA, as they charmingly call them), the little pi$$-ants out here are nothing in comparison to RIFAs. They leave this wonderful whitehead several days after the bite in many cases.

Jenn-that's how you'll know it was a fire ant and not something else. One, or sometime two, little whiteheads will pop up that burn rather than itch.

 

Seems to me a few years ago some genius came up with a portable steam generator that had a lance attachment to it. You'd tow it around like a deranged little red wagon, fire it up, and use the steam lance to penetrate the nest. Just stick it in there, and keep working it around to a depth of several feet and cook the ants alive, aiming to kill the queen.

 

No pesticides, low cost, and cheap entertainment! Of course, no residual pesticides, either.

 

ETA: For cheap entertainment value, nothing beats a block of dry ice on a harvester ant mound. The CO2 sets off something in them- presumably that an invader is attacking the nest, breathing out CO2- and they go after it in massive waves. The dry ice freezes them and asphyxiates them, while their cohorts climb over the bodies of the dead to attack the block of dry ice.

 

I never tried this on fire ant nests, but BOY I'd love to know if it works the same!

I want one of those steam gadgets to kill the weeds in my yard. I've tried pots of boiling water, but it's a pain to get them outside, and to have enough hot water. I wonder if the dried ice would work on weeds?

Donna
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Guest SoulsMom

Fire ants are tiny red ants and they hurt like a B*&%H. The blisters, whelps, whatever last and hurt for days . . . .careful when gardening, their mounds can be anywhere. I ALWAYS mowed the grass in long pants. One mis-step and you'd think your leg was on, well, fire . . . . .

 

The pesticides at the hardware store can control them, but they never seem to go away

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