How Do You Treat Fire Ant Mounds

Perhaps you stepped outside and noticed a pile of dirt in your yard and wondered, “How do you treat fire ant mounds?” That led you to Fire Ant Specialists. We are glad you asked the question, and we look forward to sharing the answer with you.

Fire Ant Specialists has been in the fire ant fighting business for more than 30 years. We have the experience and expertise to be of great assistance to you if you have noticed a fire ant mound. We provide wall-to-wall coverage, and with the help of our sister companies, we can treat up to 1000 acres a day.

No yard is too big or too small for us. We work with a variety of individual clients, corporations, and government entities. If you live in the Southeastern United States, you are quite aware of how pervasive the presence of fire ants is.

Just for the sake of a little history, these red imported fire ants that inflict pain on you and anyone else who crosses their path are not native to North America. They are actually transplants that came from South America on a boat that landed in Alabama. The Southeast’s nearly tropical climate has given them a lovely place to take over.

Fire Ant Specialists is trying to help fight that takeover. This is why we want to provide you with all the answers you are seeking about your fire ant situation.

DIY Methods

We always want to be transparent and discuss the DIY methods that you can find at your local garden center or hardware store. There will be treatments available that are labeled baits. Unfortunately, the chemicals being utilized are not attractive enough to be a bait that takes the queen out.

Most of the chemical options you can purchase at box stores are designed to kill on contact. That means that every ant that runs across it will die. So, yes, you will kill some ants. But, did you know that there can be nearly half a million ants in one colony? That’s 500,000 ants. 

Add to that the fact that ant colonies can be as deep as 25 feet under the ground with a wide berth of tunnels, and it becomes easier to understand why that little bottle of ant bait didn’t do the trick. We’re not saying it won’t take out some of the worker ants that are running around the area initially. But when ants see a slaughter, they move the entrances to their colonies. This is why one colony has several mounds.

Of course, there are other DIY methods that are so minimally effective and/or dangerous, we can only give them a brief mention here. Yes, fire and boiling water can kill some of the ants near the surface of the mound. But again, that’s about it. Even if you managed to take out 20,000 ants, there’d still be possibly 480,000 under the ground.

Fire Ant Specialists’ Methods

We do use a baited granule method, like you think you can find at the box store. Ours actually has the necessary chemicals to entice workers to pick them up and bring them to the queen. Ingesting our formula makes the queen sterile. 

Ants have a limited lifetime, and the queen is simply there, popping out up to 800 replacements every day. So, as worker ants die off, there are plenty to fill in the gaps every single time. This is why it is necessary that the queen not be able to replenish her colony.

How do you treat fire ant mounds? You call Fire Ant Specialists and let us take the queen out for you. Schedule an appointment or get a free estimate by calling 352-291-2687 or clicking here.