On 9/5/2017 10:43 AM, Derald wrote:
George Shirley wrote:

Those of you out there that don't have fire ants consider yourselves
blessed. We're in the progress of pouring boiling water down our biggest
pest in the gardens home.
I've dealt with fire ants for 40+ years; good luck with that hot
water down the hole bs. Just as with ground-nesting wasps, gasoline and
fire work well but, unlike the wasps, surviving ants will re-establish
nets elsewhere. In 20 years of "due diligence" at this place, I've got
them down to a few small outbreaks each year. Of course, since this
land was "cleared" 60-70 years ago, it may be that nesting sites
(decaying subterranean wood, e.g. tree roots) have diminished but I
credit Amdro, IME, the only ant specific insecticide that works on them.
Amdro is "fire and specific" only because many other types of ants won't
eat the bait but those that do die. Like the boiling water, any other
product that I've tried simply disperses them, resulting in a host of
satellite mounds, often at significant distance from the original
problem site. They're a major pain but at least they're more easily
controlled than grasshoppers and locusts.
Having said that, I must confess that a fragment of the familiar
colony persists (and has done for years) in and under the timber
retaining walls of one garden bed and I have the scars to prove it. I
don't use any "chemicals" in the garden and I know of no predators or
pathology that'll take the little *******s out so I just deal with
****ed off ants injecting fire into my feet and lower legs several times
each year. I can't guess whether or for how long the toxin remains in
an AWG's body but I'm sure to be loaded. It is possible to use the
ants' behavior pattern and tribal reaction to threats to minimize the
damage to ones self but I'm not telling.

I was raised in Orange County, Texas, where so it is said, that foreign
fire ants first came ashore. They finally found us after several years
at the old home place, right after I got out of the USN and married,
about 1961 if memory, very old memory, works. Here we have five feet of
gumbo clay under two inches of sand for our front and back yards. The
fire ants come up sporadically in the spring, usually by our raised bed
gardens. Right where, if you're working the garden, you get bitten.
Don't want the amdro or other things there as the plants pick it up too.
The boiling water, two pots full, are to kill the queens, generally the
rest of the ants, less queens, generally just die off as I have seen
before. Now we're waiting for two things, if the ants all die we got the
queens; if they start moving out, they've still got at least one queen
and they're all moving next door. Suits me.