- Joined
- Jun 18, 2013
- Messages
- 35
Fire ants are a constant nuisance to me. I have 2-1/2 acres with woods on both sides, so eradication is impossible. New nests are always popping up whenever the nests in the woods send out new queens. I have learned to live with them and just focus on keeping the tortoise pens clear. I usually just pour a pot of boiling water on the mound as soon as it appears. Regardless, I end up with painful, unsightly, puss filled ant stings on my hands and arms whenever I weed the flowerbeds.
Today I got a little sweet revenge. We have had so much rain recently that the ground has become very saturated. Last night it rained again and a large section of my property flooded. Thankfully I made sure when I set up my tortoises that they were in areas that wouldn't flood. Even the inside of the sulcatas burrow was dry. Fire ants have a way of surviving temporary floods. They make living rafts, I snapped a pic of one.
Under these circumstances it was very easy to scoop up the entire colony into a jar and then shake them until they drown. When I got tired of shaking jars and waiting for them to drown, I grabbed an aerosol paint can and a barbeque lighter and started torching the ant rafts. Many of the colonies contained multiple queens, the larger ones had 4-5 queens. This is not including the winged new queens that haven't mated yet. I found this strange, but when I googled it, it turns out multiple egg laying queens are common with fire ants. Anyways, I must have executed 50-100 queens and hundreds of thousands of workers today. Too bad they will quickly repopulate since the big colonies are in the woods bordering my property. At least I was able to get a little pay back and without being stung once.
Today I got a little sweet revenge. We have had so much rain recently that the ground has become very saturated. Last night it rained again and a large section of my property flooded. Thankfully I made sure when I set up my tortoises that they were in areas that wouldn't flood. Even the inside of the sulcatas burrow was dry. Fire ants have a way of surviving temporary floods. They make living rafts, I snapped a pic of one.
Under these circumstances it was very easy to scoop up the entire colony into a jar and then shake them until they drown. When I got tired of shaking jars and waiting for them to drown, I grabbed an aerosol paint can and a barbeque lighter and started torching the ant rafts. Many of the colonies contained multiple queens, the larger ones had 4-5 queens. This is not including the winged new queens that haven't mated yet. I found this strange, but when I googled it, it turns out multiple egg laying queens are common with fire ants. Anyways, I must have executed 50-100 queens and hundreds of thousands of workers today. Too bad they will quickly repopulate since the big colonies are in the woods bordering my property. At least I was able to get a little pay back and without being stung once.
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