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Hello, this is Ben Sell with Ben’s Pest Control podcast. And today I wanted to talk to you about fire ants. First thing I would tell you is, not a lot of people are aware of this. But in
Florida we actually have two different species of fire ants. We have native fire ants, which people are not extremely familiar with. But as it stated, they are native to Florida. And then we have imported fire ants. Now the imported fire ants are the fire ants that most people are very, very familiar with. Those are the fire ants that make the big dirt mounds, those are the ones that leave the nasty Sting, and the burn that’s associated with that sting. And of course this a lot of people report kind of like pussy bumps and injury that can take up two weeks to completely heal. So the first thing I would tell you is this, that fire ants actually don’t bite you. A lot of people believe they’re bitten by the fire end. But they’re not.
They’re actually stung. They have a little stinger that they inject into you. And the stinger is what causes the intense burning. So that’s just a little interesting fact about the fire ants. Another thing I like to tell people about the the important fire ants are this fire ants, the Queen can be up to five feet underground. And she can have a nest that has a foraging area have 20,30, 40 feet, that they actually forage for food. So where you see the mound, the nest is actually the foraging area that nest is actually much wider than just where that mound is. Now, some people know that they obviously realize fire ants are dangerous, they hurt people. But what they don’t realize is that fire ants have actually killed people in the state of Florida. So there is a very serious danger. Though it’s not very common. It does happen. So people need to be aware. One of the things that we see a lot of with finances, for the most part, they don’t want to come into your home. fire ants prefer to be outside they prefer to be in the ground, and they prefer to to build their nests in the ground. But fire ants in our rainy season, on occasion will come into homes, we’ve had them move whole colonies inside of structures, and move all that dirt and everything right inside of the home. So that is obviously a threat. In one case I can think of I had a customer who had gone away on vacation when they came back. I guess they had come back at night. And when they came home, their daughter went to go get into her bed and thank goodness her bedroom light had been on because she pulled the covers back and the whole fire ant mound had moved next to the bed and the nest was under the covers of the bed. So it was a it was a very good thing that the young lady had decided to leave her light on and pull her covers back because I often wonder what would have happened if she had jumped into the bed it would have been a nightmare situation for her she would have been very hurt. Anyways, a lot of the things that I like to tell people, especially the general public about fire ants, is that a lot of people will come and say oh, I treated the fire ants, I treated the fire ants there’s there’s been no solution to the fire ants. And one of the major things that most of the general public and homeowners don’t realize is when they go to the store and they they’re looking for a wave to treat the fire and some selves.
There are two different products that homeowners are looking at. And those two different products are one a fire and bait and two fire ants insecticide. So a lot of people will make the mistake of not realizing that they’ve bought one or the other. And what happens is this fire ants aren’t looking for food right on top of their mound, they’re looking for food in their foraging areas. So if you’ve gone to the hardware store and you’ve picked up a product that’s a fire and bait, you want to actually spread that around the mound and not on top of the mound. If that bait hits the mound fire ants will come out they’ll collect that bait. In some cases, they’ll bring it back into the colony, they’ll store it in a room and they’ll close it off and they’ll never ever eat it. So when you’re using a bait that’s designed to to work as food, you want that bait to be spread out around the nest itself in the area that they’re foraging for food. That’s the way you’re going to get maximum results. So that’s number one. The number two thing that most homeowners buy when they go to the hardware store is a pesticide for the fire ants. Now pesticide is a little different. You want to put that right on the mound. And in a lot of cases if it’s a granular pesticide, you want to take some water And really soak that into the nest. Now it’s difficult to get the whole nest with a pesticide because as I stated before, the Queen can be up to five feet underground. So you’re literally trying to soak that chemical down deep enough to kill as much of that nest as you possibly can. So if you’re going to buy a pesticide and put it on the fire mound, always try to water it in, especially if it’s a granular soak it down deep, I would also suggest that you be prepared for that fire ant mound to probably move and find it within 10 or 20 feet of where that original mound is, and then just be prepared to do it again, because the more you do that, the more you’re going to set those fire ants back, you’re going to limit their ability, you’re going to kill a lot of the workers, you’re going to take their their ability to go out and get food and support the colony, and you’re going to reduce it immensely. So from the general public’s point of view, those are the two suggestions we make. If you are not the kind of person who wants to address this themselves, we do offer lawn spray service. So if you have plants in your lawn, and you’re looking for somebody to come out and and treat the lawn, please feel free to give us a call at 772-878-1972 or check us out on our website at BensPest.Biz. And hopefully you can get some more information and feel free to call us we’ll be happy to give you a free estimate and a free evaluation as what we see going on and hopefully we can guide you in the right way to get this problem result. So thank you and have a great day.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
