Can Fire Ants Fly?
Red imported fire ants are troublemakers. The fact that these pests can fly helps them spread from location to location, doing extensive damage, aggressively stinging humans, and even killing livestock and poultry. Fire Ant Control, LLC can help you minimize the damage they cause.
Fire Ant Control, LLC is a recognized specialist 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, providing the most effective and affordable fire ant solution.
About Fire Ants
Red Imported Fire Ants, or Solenopsis invicta, gained entry to North America through cargo ships in the port of Mobile, Alabama in the late 1930s.
Fire ants build nests outdoors in mounds of soil and live beneath them in colonies, elaborate networks of tunnels that may stretch as far as 25 feet. The mounds help regulate the temperatures in the colony below, allowing the ants to survive severe weather and seasonal changes.
When a fire ant colony is disturbed, worker ants will aggressively rise up from beneath the mound and bite or sting humans and animals standing nearby, first sinking their mandibles into the skin and then injecting a venom known as Solenopsin into their victims.
Do Fire Ants Have Wings? Why Do They Fly?
As a matter of fact, yes; some fire ants have wings! The winged ants in the colony are called “alates” or “reproductives” whose sole purpose is to reproduce and start new colonies.
How do fire ants reproduce? During the spring and summer, winged male and female ants take what are called “nuptial” flights. The males fly off first and wait for the females in the air. The female alates (virgin queens) emerge from the mound and take flight, mating in the air with a waiting male.
After mating, the male alate dies. The newly mated female is now a queen. She is capable of flying up about one-quarter of a mile from the parent colony, but can be carried for miles on the wind. If she survives the landing (many don’t), she will find a place to start a new nest then shed her now useless wings and start a new fire ant colony.
The new queen will lay her first batch of eggs and look after the young until they develop into workers. From then on, her only purpose is to be an egg-laying baby factory!
Kill Fire Ants from the Inside Out
The key to exterminating red fire ants is to kill the colonies from the inside out by sterilizing the queen(s).
Fire Ant Control’s proven treatment works for properties ranging from small residential lots to thousands of acres. We guarantee it will rid 85-95% of the fire ants from your property for four months at a time, or your money back.
Worker ants eat our potent, food-like granular bait, carry it down into the colony where they share it with other ants, and the entire ant population dies naturally. Once the queen has been sterilized, the entire colony will disappear within weeks, and no new ants will be born.
Red imported fire ants can fly, and not even floods will drown or deter them. Find out how Fire Ant Control, LLC can help you get rid of them. Call us today at (239) 312-8200 for a free estimate!