Fire Ant Facts

Fascinating Fire Ant Facts

With Fire Ant Specialists, the fire ant – the #1 pest of the Southeast United States – has finally met its match! Don’t let these vicious pests get the best of your property. Here are some fascinating facts about fire ants you should know.

• Red imported fire ants were accidentally brought to the U.S. from South America in 1918 and arrived near Mobile, Alabama.
• A typical fire ant colony consists of a queen and worker ants. Workers build the nests (mounds), care for the queen and her eggs, scavenge for food, and protect the colony. Tens of thousands of fire ants live in just one fire ant colony.
• A fire ant queen is an egg-laying machine. A single queen can produce more than 1,500 to 2,000 eggs daily. Worker ants are sterile and can’t reproduce.
• Fire ants build nests outdoors in mounds of loose soil and live beneath them in an elaborate network of underground tunnels that radiate away from the mound, extending up to 25 feet. The oval-shaped mounds average 10″ tall, are about as wide as dinner plates and have no visible openings.
• Fire ant mounds are like icebergs – most of the nest is underground in an elaborate network of tunnels up to 10’ deep.
• Single queen colonies may have 40-150 mounds and up to 7 million ants per acre. There could be more than 200 mounds in multiple queen colonies and up to 40 million ants per acre!
• Most fire ants are female. Some fire ants are male, and their job is to breed with the queen. However, most worker ants are infertile females who maintain the colony and care for the young.
• Fire ants are highly aggressive, attacking people and animals when their mounds are disturbed. Hundreds of them swarm out of the mound and sting within seconds.
• Fire ants can sting and bite, but only the sting leaves you in severe pain. Most people have mild irritations, but some are unlucky and may experience an extreme reaction that could be fatal.
• Fire ants also eat through power lines, wreak havoc with lights, junction boxes, and HVAC equipment, and damage machinery, irrigation, and transformer boxes.
• Fire ants can float! In heavy rain, they will go to higher ground. And if there is no higher ground, they can cling together and form a giant floating “raft” to transport larvae out of a flooded nest to safety.