How to Kill a Fire Ant Queen
How do you rid your property of red imported fire ants? The only effective solution is to sterilize and kill the fire ant queen.
Red imported fire ants (Solenopsis invicta) are a well-known pest throughout the southeastern United States, infesting crops in southern states and spreading westward into California and northward along the east coast.
Fire Ant Control, LLC, headquartered in Bokeelia, Florida, and our sister companies serve the entire imported red fire ant quarantine area of the southeastern U.S. and are capable of treating up to 1,000 acres per day.
The Fire Ant Queen
The fire ant queen is the leader of the colony. Her sole purpose is to be an egg-laying machine – laying up to 1,500 eggs per day for two to seven years – to populate the colony. Her nest is located deep within the colony where she is fed by worker ants and protected from predators. Once the queen establishes her colony, she never leaves the colony again.
Many established colonies also harbor multiple queens. Properties with single queen colonies may have 40 to 150 mounds and about 7 million red fire ants per acre. If infested with multiple queen colonies, there may be 200 or more mounds and up to 40 million red fire ants per acre.
Red fire ants often move their nests both horizontally and vertically to adjust to temperature and humidity and to protect the queen from danger. If the colony is disturbed, the workers will quickly carry the queen through underground tunnels so she can start a new colony.
Leave Fire Ant Control to the Professionals!
To prevent a fire ant colony from surviving, all queens must be sterilized to prevent them from reproducing.
Spraying insecticide on a nest of fire ants would not be enough to exterminate them. It may even cause the colony to disperse and start a colony somewhere else on your property, making control more difficult.
Fire Ant Control, LLC is recognized as a specialist in controlling red fire ants. Our proven treatment works for properties ranging from small residential lots to thousands of acres. The potent, food-like granular bait we use contains an insect growth regulator that sterilizes the queen and is approved for use around people, pets, livestock, and on pastures, hay fields and farmland.
Extermination is not instantaneous but, once the worker ants have eaten the bait and carried it down into the colony, sterilizing the queen, the entire colony will disappear, and no new ants will be born. Within weeks, your property will be nearly free of fire ants.
Because new colonies can invade when ants fly off to mate and start a new colony, or when an existing colony expands into new territory, we highly recommend treatments every four months to keep these troublemakers under control.
Find out how Fire Ant Control, LLC can help you kill fire ant queens and rid your property of their destructive colonies. Call us today at (239) 312-8200 for a free estimate!