Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Agent Brandi Keller answers your Houston gardening...
Biodiversity of life is incredibly important to a healthy ecosystem, but can we all agree that fire ants should just go? It feels at times like they are our sidewalk jailers: always watchful and paranoid if one step is taken on the lawn.
Unfortunately, the seasonal reprieve is over. Fire ants are waking from their winter slumber and building more mounds. It is also the perfect time to treat them. Ants and bees are both in the order Hymenoptera, but ants are in the family Formicidae. Red imported fire ants were accidentally imported from South America. They are aggressive and can cause a white pustule after a sting. Also, they sting, not bite. Instead of brushing them away, slap down to kill them to reduce more stings.
Texas A&M AgriLife Extension uses a two-step method for a more infested area . First, broadcast a bait insecticide in spring or fall. Secondly, treat individual mounds between bait applications. Individual treatments may consist of a chemical or organic application. Liquid drenches are effective within a few hours. There are also organic mound drenches.
If you have ever seen fire ant floats that they horrifyingly create with their own bodies in floods, you know these suckers are social creatures. Not all mounds are visible on the surface and many have multiple queens over a given area. Sprinkling one mound will only treat that mound and the ants closer to the surface. Signals are sent causing the remaining colony to pack up and move on down.Fire ants become less active and live deeper in the soil in extreme heat.
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