Fuggin' Fire Ants!

[Shawn Lutz]

Amdro and/or orhter pesticide that kills ants. The mound treatment doesnt work for very long. You have to spread it over your entire lawn just as you do fertilizer, do it a couple times a year. They are a pain inthe ass but you can usually chase them away. My wife actully lets them live in the flower beds, good for the soil so she says..anything that gets in the grass is dead as thats my patrol area

[442w30]

Yeah, I use Amdro occasionally if I am "thinking strategically" or out for a walk near my house and see a mound near a public space.

I am the regular Johnny Appleseed of fire ant killers - as long as they aren't the big native red ants. I love those buggers.

For on the spot executions, I like the white powder Ortho Ant-B-Gone.
Kills them fast. Comes in a cardboard tube.

Spectracide is pretty good for whole yard treatment.

My old man used to love that Chloredane - kills everything and 75 years later, it's just as potent in the spot you poured it!
So effective, it's banned.

[dg]

Thanks for the info, guys! I think I'm gonna get with the neighbors & see if we can treat a buffer area behind all our yards with Amdro. We all get along pretty well, so that will probably fly. Maybe that plus whatever the city is doing will take care of them. I want to try to use as little strong pesticides in the yard as possible. We have lots of birds & other stuff that I don't want to poison.

[Newc]

Tide laundry powder works. Sprinkle it on the mound and they'll think it's raining crack.

[SEEGERMANY]

There was a guy here in the Shreveport/Bossier City area that had a steam generator mounted on a truck. He would insert a perforated steel rod into the ant mound and then pump steam into the ground. If I remember correctly, his services were pretty expensive but effective.

I still think that if you only have a few mounds, boiling water is your best bet. Do a GOOGLE search and you'll see quite a few sites where boiling water is recommended.

[phill_up]

There is some new shiznit, It is a termite killer that has just been approved for ants as well. I think it is called "termidor" I have no bug problems of any type now.

[Joe_Steeler]

Tide laundry powder works. Sprinkle it on the mound and they'll think it's raining crack.

Great! then you have crazy-high red ants wreaking havoc everywhere.
That's just great!

[SEEGERMANY]

I'm not sure if he's impersonating an ostrich or an anteater!

[Vass]

Termidor is the new badassery of bug killing, according to a pest guy I was talking to. Jersey City has bedbugs (!), and he's been using it off label to take them out. They are very, very difficult to eradicate due to their behavior (they'll just hang out in the walls for a year at a time without feeding) but he's had great results with it.

Vass

[jdr94]

Grits

[SEEGERMANY]

I've heard so many weird ways to fight fireants. I remember one old farmer told me to shovel ants from one pile to another. He said the colonies would kill off each other. If memory serves me right, the only thing that happened was that I pissed off two colonies and got stung several times in the process.

I've also heard that Clorox Bleach mixed with Visine works well. Get's the "red" out!

[Dreamland_Rebel]

fight fire with fire. gas and a match'll kill just about anything.

[SEEGERMANY]

fight fire with fire. gas and a match'll kill just about anything.

Yea, including the person lighting the fire. If you've got a "burning" desire to incinerate ants, use kerosene or diesel. That way, fumes won't run up your leg and BBQ your weener.

[dg]

The more reading I do, the more people seem to say that the queen is nowhere near the visible mound, so it takes some kind of bait that gets carried to her or all you're doing is killing workers & guards, then they move. Without baiting, it takes a major saturation of all the soil with poison that also kills every other bug, spider, and worm, then probably frogs, toads, and birds that eat them. I'm not up for doing that. We had a bad cricket problem a few years ago at our last place & I sprayed Diazinon all around the perimeter of the house. Never heard another chirp or saw another crawling bug for 4 years after. It was creepy, and I can see why it's off the market.

[Ben...]

While you guys have to deal with little bugs we get to deal with wild animals like cougars (both kinds).