Fire Ant Control and Fire Ant Extermination

If you have ever stood barefoot or in flip flops in the wrong dirt pile, and then felt a terrible fiery itching feeling, you’ve been stung by a fire ant. Fire Ants are a very aggressive species of ant that have the capability to “sting” or “bite” you repetitively. The most identifiable way to tell if you’ve been stung by a fire ant is the white bump that appears afterwards. This is filled with their venom, which in most cases does not have any lasting harm (except it’s going to itch and hurt for about a week), however there are some that are allergic to Fire Ant bites. Fire Ants are invasive species and are found in the southern United States.

Fire Ant mounds are relatively easy to spot, as the ants are typically seen swarming around the surface of it constantly. These are the ants that, when their home is disturbed, will swarm onto you and attack. You can try to knock down the mound yourself, I recommend using a long object that will put your skin far away from the ants that try to come after you, or you can pour scalding hot water onto the mound. These ants are attracted to oils and greases, so if you have a ton of old McDonald’s bags in your trash can, you have probably provided these guys with the perfect food source.

If you find that Fire Ants are getting into your home, without nesting inside, you want to use a bait to lure them into bringing it back into the colony and killing more than just the worker ants. You can also seal any openings you may find that they are getting in through to prevent them from coming back. Fire Ants will occasionally nest in the walls of homes as well, this would require the use of a pesticide to get rid of them. Often, if you find the nest outside of your home, you can either pour hot water over it, forcing the remaining ants to relocate, or you can spray it with a pesticide.