Fire ants include a large group of reddish-brown to black ants that normally spread by one of the following methods: seasonal relocations, migration in nursery stock, natural flights, and after floods rafting on water. Ants can be blown by the wind 12 miles during mating flights. They can “hitchhike” on birds or mass together to form a floating ball to ride out a flood.

Fire ant workers are sterile females that range in size from .08” to .2” in length. The larger workers are called majors, the medium sized are called medias and the smallest size are called minors. All of the workers sting and inject a venom that causes blisters and allergic responses, including possible anaphylactic shock. A single fire ant can grab hold with its mandibles and then whip its abdomen down and sting multiple times, injecting the poison each time. They are now found in 11 southeastern states and over 25,000 people a year seek medical attention from fire ant stings. A fire ant mound can be 15" - 24" in diameter and 10" - 18" high and 1' - 3' deep with some tunnels extending 5' or more down to the water table and can contain 80,000 to over 250,000 workers. A.K.A. the six-legged scourge of the South. Talcum powder will repel them from you.

Fire ants are omnivores and will eat plant and animal material including mice, turtles, snakes, and other vertebrates, crops, plants, saplings, wildflowers, fruit, and grass but prefer insects. U. S. fire ants readily defend their mound. Disturbed or injured workers release alarm pheromones. There are four major species, two native and two imported, found in the U. S. from the Carolinas to California. Mating between the winged forms or alates takes place 300' to 800' in the air, usually in late spring or early summer. The males fly up first and wait for the females, after mating, the males die and the newly mated queens seek moist areas, normally within one mile of the mother colony. If the female lands on a suitable moist site, she removes her wings and digs a small burrow in the soil and then seals it. Within 24 hours the queen begins laying eggs, normally only 10 - 15 in the first cluster.

The queen ant can live up to 7 years and will produce up to 1,500 to 1,600 eggs per day throughout her life. Queens are the first to be fed proteins, so any fire ant bait has to be protein-based. Fire ants feed on honeydew, sugars, proteins, oils, seeds, plants and insects. Fire ants frequently enter and nest in houses and are attracted to water and electrical wires and their associated magnetic fields or impulses. They can ruin gas pumps, transformers, traffic lights, air conditioners, heat pumps and other electrical equipment. Locate ant activity inside by watching the ant trail and follow back to the void and treat with ant baits or dusts or diluted Kleen'em Away Naturally enzymes (2 ounces each per quart of water). They will kill plants by feeding on seeds or by girdling freshly planted nursery stock. Fire ant workers compensate for changing conditions, e.g., temperature and humidity by moving the larvae and queen to suitable locations within the mound. On cool mornings in the summer the queens are near the top of the mounds where it is warmer; as the day heats up the queens go deeper into the soil.

The National Park Service has noted that fire ants are so called because their fiery venom, they latch on with barbed mandibles and sting repeatedly with spiked tails, their venom is injected by a stinger like a wasp’s, and creates a burning sensation and a small bump or pustule within 8 - 24 hours that can last for 10 days! Fire ants in the U. S. are active and aggressive, swarming over anyone or anything that disturbs their nest, be it wild animals, domestic animals and birds, pets or people. An encounter with a fire ant nest can leave a lasting memory of burning pain, followed by tiny, itching pustules, and sometimes even more severe reactions including anaphylactic shock. Fire ants are also identified in the U.S. by their reddish-brown to black color, small size (1/8” - 1/4” long) and by distinctive swarming behavior when their nest or mound is disturbed.

Because of this, and occasional news stories of livestock or people killed by multiple fire ant stings, people fear fire ants. In some areas infested with certain species of fire ants, lawns, school yards, river banks, athletic fields, mulched areas, compost piles, playgrounds, parks and picnic areas lie abandoned, unused because of the medical threat caused by the presence of fire ants. In campsites of state and national parks in fire ant infested areas, it is often difficult to put up or take down a tent without being stung by angry fire ants. In the U. S., they will storm anything that threatens their mound or that looks like food, whether it be old people, crawling babies, injured waterfowl, newborn rabbits and fawns, bedridden hospital patients, or you just walking along.

Fire ants are pests in other ways besides their stinging. They can destroy or damage crops such as soybeans, blueberries, peanuts, sunflowers, watermelons, canteloupes, cucumbers, pecans, eggplant, corn, okra, strawberries, and potatoes by feeding directly on the plants and/or by protecting other insects that damage the crops. The fire ants may feed on plant seedlings and germinating seeds causing crop damages. They chew the bark and growing tips of citrus trees and feed on the fruit. Fire ant mounds can break equipment and interfere with farming and mowing operations and turn ornamental turf and recreational fields into aesthetically disfigured moonscapes. Fire ants have caused sections of roads to collapse by removing huge amounts of soil from under the asphalt. Fire ants can nest in air conditioners, traffic lights and other electrical connections, often causing disruption of service. (They can be quickly removed if you carefully vacuum them out - or apply a libral dusting of C-M PowderGard. Put 1 tablespoon of C-M PowderGard in your dry vac bag, or some diluted Kleen Green Enzymes in your wet vac.) They are especially partial to sun and sandy soil.

Beginning in the late 1950’s, when the federal government first declared war on fire ants, stating it would attempt to wipe out S. invicta once and for all. World War II-era bombers dusted millions of acres in the South with the highly poisonous pesticides dieldrin and heptachlor. Some fire ants died, but so did birds, fish, raccoons, opposums, dogs and cattle. The bird population declined over 85% in Texas and Louisiana. When the program was finally halted, the government had spent $70 million, all in vain. Before the campaign, S. invicta had only infested 90 million acres; five years later, they had spread to 126 million acres!

In 1958, the Federal Fire Ant Quarantine was implemented try to limit the spread of fire ants from quarantined areas. Hay, sod, plants and used soil moving equipment must be inspected and/or treated before being moved out of the quarantine area. USDA, APHIS and PPQ mandate plants must be pest free but do not dictate treatment strategies - Flood or spray with diluted KLEEN GREEN ENZYMES or dust with C-M PowderGard.

The oldest and most expendable 20% or so of the colony’s fire ant workers leave the nest to search for food. They explore 50-100 feet from the nest with an efficient looping pattern. They can gnaw on soiled clothing. Although the worker ants can chew and cut with their mandibles, they can only swallow liquids. When they encounter liquid food in the field, they swallow it and carry it back to the nest. Solid food is cut to reasonable size and carried back to the nest. They prefer protein foods, e.g., insects and meats, but will feed virtually on everything, including fruit, seeds, grease, butter, honeydew, plants, nuts, etc.

Like other ants, fire ant workers share their food with their nest mates by regurgitating it so that it can be licked or sucked up as a liquid by other ants. In this way, most ants in the nest get fed equally. This food sharing is also why slow-acting poison baits can be an effective control tactic against fire ants. You can try using 1% or less borax or boric acid with 10% sucrose in water by ant colonies for 3 - 4 months - it may take that long to get control. Try using several (filled and drilled) 35 mm film capsules per nest or sponge pieces soaked with bait.