Control

Treat mounds directly with Fire Ant Killer. Sprinkle a few tablespoons lightly and evenly over the entire mound. Avoid disturbing the colony during application. This can cause the ants to vacate a mound. This treatment will kill most of the colony within a day.

To keep the queen from migrating throughout your property and to keep away foragers, apply treatments such as Talstar Granular Insecticide and BIFENTRHIN GRANULES. Talstar and BIFENTRHIN GRANULES is a powerful insecticide that provides control that lasts up to six months. Broadcast the granules over your lawn at a rate of about four lbs. per 1000 sq. ft.

Fire ants are notoriously difficult to control. For this reason, you need to treat their mounds directly and apply a broadcast treatment.

Red imported fire ants have colonies consisting of brood, winged males with black bodies, reddish-brown winged females and workers. The worker ants are sterile, wingless females that protect the queen by defending against intruders, eating food first and moving her from danger. The winged reproductives live within the mound until their mating flights, which are most common during spring and fall. A queen fire ant can lay up to 800 eggs per day, building a colony having up to 500,000 workers. Queen ants can live seven years, but worker ants usually live only about five weeks.

Areas infested with fire ants having single-queen colonies have 40 to 150 mounds per acre, while multiple-queen colonies have more than 200 mounds and 40 million ants per acre. Fire ants prefer to build their mounds in open areas and in rotting wood. Colonies can quickly move from one site to another; the queen needs only six workers to start a new colony.

Fire ants are noted for their painful stings and the serious allergic reactions that some people have in reaction to them. They are known to attack en masse due to sudden movement, so if you accidentally step on a mound and they crawl up your leg, any quick movement could trigger all the ants to sting.