Fire Ants, Help

[forgivenmuch]

i am getting fire ants in my back yard, and i put out ant killer, they stung me 10 times already on the same foot, i wanted to scream they hurt and im sick of looking at thier nest in my yard, i have a few and i know the ant killer dont work, i heard gasoline works i have never tried that and dont want to.
any advice is needful, i know they are in the ground deep and if i could get a shovel and pick the nest up and throw it in the woods i would, but that would not do any good. and im really not that brave. lol any ideas?

 

[lillybug0514]

Try Cream of Wheat, I know people who swear by it Just pour it dry on the nest, and if it works, they should eat it and it is supposed to swell in their stomach and kill them Never tried it myself, but it cant hurt and its cheaper than poision

 

[chilehed]

Fire ants are really nasty, at least the ones that I'm familiar with in central Florida. I got stung by one once and it felt like I got stabbed with a red hot needle, hurt like heck and raised a rock-hard pimple that lasted a month. They make HUGE mounds, three feet high or more, with literally hundreds of thousand of ants. Every once in a while you hear of them killing a pet or a small child, it's horrible. If you try to dig up a big nest you'll only get hurt.

Look for a product called Amdro, its a bait that has a hormone to stop the queen's egg production and a slow-acting poison that allows enough time for the entire colony to ingest it. My mom swears by it. The other big-name makers like Raid make something similar for home use, it worked very well on my infestation of pharoe ants when nothing else did.

http://www.amdro.com/

 

[forgivenmuch]

thanks for the advice i will try both

 

[Redneck Crow]

If you can find the individual nests, my dad used to pour boiling water on them. It kills the ants, plus there is the undeniable sweetness of revenge.

 

[mamabear4]

I grew up with fire ants and last summer while in Idaho I saw some children standing in an ant hill and letting the ants climb up their legs then jump out and shake them off. I watched them verrrrryyy closely even though I knew fire ants were a southern thing. i couldn't beleive that children could actually stand in ant hills. Here in Mississippi where I live I've seen children run through anthills as fast as they can but you can be sure they went too fast for the ants to latch on to them. (I've never been that brave.)


The only method we ever used when I was growing up was to pour just a little gasoline on the hills and then light them with a match. We'd take a hoe and stir the fire all the way into the bottom of the hill where it would eventually burn out. Now, that's not a method to tell a ten year old, by any means, and may not even be something for an adult to try. But it does work and when I'm out of bait I'll still do that occasionally. You can get all sorts of ant bait but not very many of them work for long. The hill usualy crusts over and may even die all together, but you can be sure in a week or so a new hill will emerge just a few feet away. It's just part of living in the South, in my opinion.

 

[Happy to be His]

We buy ortho fire ant killer. We have them all summer. We just put them on all the piles as soon as we see them. I have heard that they are very hard to kill........If you us the killer...it does keep them under control....hope this helps


I have heard that oatmeal is good too. never seen it work.....

 

[Jesus Dude]

Amdro works every time. It's food pellets with cyanide (pretty sure) in them. The ants bring it in pretty quickly (no need to stir the ant nest up, they can smell it, if you mess the nest up they will move to another spot in your yard). They feed it to the queen, the queen dies, if the queen dies, the nest dies. I highly recommend it. If you do get it though, you don't need to pour much on the nest, about two tablespoons.

If you're looking for an organic solution, I've heard that they do not like ground cinnamon at all (won't kill 'em though).

 

[forgivenmuch]

thanks for the advice, i will try these also, i will let you know what worked.

 

[Shekatt]

If they get close to the house, you can shake out baby powder (the kind with talc, not cornstarch) around your windows and such. They will not walk across it.

Shekatt:
who lives with about 20 mounds in her yard!!!! they just keep moving, uggghh!!!