10 Important Things You Should Know About Fire Ants
If your property has been overtaken by destructive and dangerous red fire ants, here are 10 important things you should know about them as well as information about the most effective and affordable fire ant solution from Fire Ant Control, LLC.
- Red Imported Fire Ants, or Solenopsis invicta, were accidentally brought into the port of Mobile, Alabama, from Brazil around 1930.
- Fire ants build nests outdoors in mounds of soil and live beneath them in a colony, an elaborate network of tunnels that may stretch as far as 25 feet.
- The oval-shaped mounds help to regulate temperatures in the colony below, allowing the ants to survive severe weather and seasonal changes.
- Mounds are typically found in open sunny areas, such as pastures, parks, lawns, and fields, under piles of rocks, bricks or rotting logs, in electrical equipment, and in or near building foundations.
- Within each colony are workers and queens – from 100,000 to 500,000 fire ants in a single colony. Queens can live for two to six years and lay from 1,500 to 5,000 eggs per day, enabling fire ants to multiply rapidly.
- Single queen colonies may have 40 to 150 mounds and about 7 million red fire ants per acre. It’s also possible to have multiple queen colonies with 200 or more mounds and up to 40 million red fire ants per acre.
- When a colony is disturbed, worker ants will aggressively rise up from beneath the mound and bite or sting humans and animals standing nearby, first gripping the skin and then injecting a venom known as Solenopsin into their victims.
- The sting or bite causes an intense burning sensation and, within a day or so, forms a white fluid-filled pustule or blister at the sting site. For most people, this is just painful. Others may be allergic and go into anaphylactic shock, requiring urgent medical attention.
- Fire ants have been known to sting, and even kill, small animals and pets, particularly very young animals, caged animals, and those that are old and unable to move out of harm’s way.
- Heavy rainfall (or flooding the nest) will not drown fire ants. Instead, they will emerge from their nests, latch onto each other forming a huge watertight ball or raft, and float with the water (sometimes for days), looking for shelter until they can re-establish a new nest in the soil.
Leave Fire Ant Control to the Professionals!
The experts at Fire Ant Control, LLC are recognized specialists in controlling red fire ants on any size or type of land. Headquartered in Bokeelia, Florida, we serve the entire imported fire ant quarantine area of the southeastern U.S., and are capable of treating up to 1,000 acres per day.
Careful application of our potent, food-like granular bait kills the ant colonies from the inside out. The bait contains an insect growth regulator that sterilizes the queen and is approved for use around people, pets, livestock, and on farmland, pastures, and hay fields.
We guarantee that our fully licensed and insured service will help rid 85-95% of the fire ants from your residential, commercial or agricultural property for four months at a time, or your money back!
The only successful method of killing fire ants is to kill the colony from the inside out. Call Fire Ant Control today at (239) 312-8200 to learn more important things about fire ants and to get your free estimate!