Fire Ants Management

Fire Ants In North Texas are a common occurrence that can be a threat to your family and your pet and fire ant management can be difficult.Fire ants are a scary reality of life in the South. Their painful, stinging bites can be especially harmful to people who are allergic to them, and they have been known to hurt or even kill livestock and pets. Often, fire ants build their colonies in electrical equipment, like air conditioners and outlet boxes. Between the ants chewing on the cables and the soil that the ants move into the equipment, they can cause serious damage.

Fire ants can also be detrimental to your turf when they build their colony there. If you’ve found their large mounds in your lawn, then you know how maddening the situation can be. Aside from the potential danger to your family and pets, those mounds are an aesthetic nightmare. Fire ants are efficient when it comes to building these mounds. They’ve been known to make as many as 300 in a one-acre section. You may think you have eliminated them when you no longer see their mounds, but they may still be underground or moved to a new location. Fire ants will move their mounds upon the surface or below ground depending on moisture levels.

Fire ants look similar to many helpful, native ant species. That’s why it’s important to ask a professional to diagnose the problem. Worker fire ants typically have shiny black abdomens with the rest of their body being a dark reddish brown. Most are between 1/16 and ¼ inch long. Knowing which kind of ant is infesting your yard will go a long way toward helping you efficiently solve the problem.

Many people try to eliminate fire ants from their yard by treating individual mounds. We’ve found that this approach is not as effective as using a broadcast method that treats a larger area. When the problem is particularly severe, we may recommend broadcasting a fire ant bait twice a year and then following up with individual mound treatments for those really stubborn colonies.

Based on scientific evidence and our own experience, we believe that multiple applications of fire ant bait are often the most effective treatment method. Fire ants mistake the bait for food, and they bring it back to their colony where it is ingested by the queen. The poison effectively wipes out the colony. When applied in the spring and fall, this approach is cost-effective and very respectful of the environment. Customers often see the effects of the bait application within just a few days. Typically, it is not necessary to follow up with an individual-mound treatment because the bait proves to be so effective. See what our friends at Texas A&M Horticulture have to say about Texas Fire Ants and Fire Ant Management.