Has anyone used cream of wheat (farina) to get rid of fire ants? Someone told me that if you sprinkle it on the ant hill the ants will take it home to feed the boss and it will destroy them. Paulette

-- paulette mark (kiwi333@ipa.net), March 12, 2000

Answers

Paulette, I've fought and hated fire ants for years now. I've tried farina, and it did nothing so far as I could tell. Boiling water helps, if you can get enough in the mound to reach the queen. Problem is they may keep her 10 feet down. Sevin dust in a ring around the mound helps, but I know some people have a problem with this. I just have a problem with fire ants.

-- Green (ratdogs10@yahoo.com), March 13, 2000.

Seems I remember reading once that dry, uncooked grits would kill ants. I believe when they eat them, they swell in their stomachs and kill them. Might be worth a try.

-- barbara (barbaraj@mis.net), March 13, 2000.

Go down to Msc. Threads section below. This is a series of posting caled "getting rid of ants without chemicals"

I have also used the boiling water with good sucess at killing ants and yellow jackets, however I pour 3 to 4 gallons of water into each mound. Smaller amounts of boiling water will not reach the main portion of the colony.

BE CAREFUL! last year while doing this I was stung and jerked spilling boiling water on my leg. I now have a scar about 4" in diameter. Nothing hurts worst then a burn except maybe a kidney stone.

Fire ants mound are connected together so if one mound is attacked the workers from another mound may come to help defend.

-- Rich (pntbeldyk@wirefire.com), March 13, 2000.

We live in East Texas the fire ant capital of the world. We have tried everything and I can tell you from experience that the only way to get them away from your yard is to poison. We use diazonon granuals, I lock up the chickens, never poison around any young animals, and put poison around our house and yard. I know that this will kill some ants, but my goal is to move them out into the woods surrounding the house. Sort of a ant perimeter. This is why we have gone to raised beds, I can poison around them and not in with my veggies. We do have to reapply every month, or if it rains alot. I used to take the magazine Organic Gardening, and in a more perfect world I would love not to have to use chemicals. But here (and mayber your ants aren't as bad or as many as ours) but here we have no choice.. Now if I could get rid of this stinging nettle! It laughs at Round-up...Vicki

-- Vicki McGaugh (vickilonesomedoe@hotmail.com), March 14, 2000.

The way Bt works if you were to spinkle it around the mound it might kill the larvae, hence killing the mound. You might be able to put Bt into a syrginge and inject into the mound.

Please understand if you use a pesticide in a fashion that it is not labeled for then the EPA may come down on you.

Bt - Bacillus thuringiensis

Soil bacterium that produces pesticidal toxins. Once in the gut of an insect larva, the bacteria produce crystalline toxins that eventually cause the gut to become fatally paralysed.

-- Rich (pntbeldyk@wirefire.com), March 14, 2000.

I've been living with em for a long time, and these are my conclusions. Do whatever it takes to keep em out of the house. Usually a commercial spray around the perimeter. Hate using it, but everything else doesn't work as far as preventing entry. Outside the house, I keep a big bag of Sevin dust for dusting my setting hens and my free range banny hens. Otherwise, I'd never get a single chick hatched out. I've got one bottle of diazinon, about five years old. One teaspoon on top of the mound will knock em out. But here's the kicker. I don't kill all of them. Poison the nests that are immediately adjacent to the house (those nests that send workers under the doors and through the windows on a daily basis). Mounds away from the house, I leave, unless they're threatening my chickens. They can't survive the chickens scratching yard. They do live outside the pen, and forage into the pen though. The reason I leave mounds alone if their not causin me trouble is that if I kill em all from a large area, the next time they swarm I'll have ten times more fire ants than I originally had. The worker/soldier in nests I leave alone go out and kill all those queens that swarm, preventing new nests.

It doesn't work all the time, but I rarely have to get out that nasty poison.

There's a man over in Marshall, Tx who was trying to sell an organic fire ant poison, but the State and Fed shut him down because he didn't go through the permitting process. Remember correctly, it was a mix of molasses, vinegar, and ?, can't remember. Do know it was selling briskly hereabouts till he was told he needed a permit. He complained it was all grocery store foodstuffs. Didn't matter. BTW, Marshall, Tx proclaims itself Fire Ant Capital of the World...have fire ant collecting contest, costumes, etc.

-- phil briggs (phillipbriggs@thenett.com), March 14, 2000.

I don't know about farina, but I used to have moderate sucess in dry weather by surrounding the mound with oatmeat. I didn't dig them up and perform a post mortem, but it reduced the population. I lived in the Texas Gulf Coast then. My cousin there used a steam cleaner with a long nozzle. unfortunately both are a lot of work and they don't kep the area clear from the next generation migrating in from the out side. Good Luck

-- Michael M. McFall (mcfallm@aol.com), March 16, 2000.

I live north of Marshall, TX, about 50 miles. The TV station in Tyler used to give out the formula to kill fire ants during their Farm and Ranch Show, but different people do the show now. The man from Marshall's fire ant killer had dish detergent in it, I believe it was Joy or Dawn. There were 13 or 14 ingredients in all. The man who used to do the farm show also used to recommend combining 5 lbs. cornmeal, 2 Tablespoons AMDRO, and grape juice, I think 1 cup purple grape juice. Stir it up and sprinkle around the mounds. He said the cornmeal was to distribute the poison, and the grape juice was to attract the ants. I never did try either method.

-- Green (ratdogs10@yahoo.com), March 17, 2000.

Another response from the fire ant capital.....The ONLY time to use any kind of poison is when they are coming into your bed at 3am! If you make a giant batch of chicken manure tea, say 10 gallons or more add an entire garlic, and make some citrus oil (equal parts citrus and water, let sit for 10 days covered) let all of this set together for a few days then drench the most problematic mounds once a week for a month , that will do them in. We can only control them now and all of the evil chemicals in pesticides are not worth it. This method works; they are still around at my place just moving out of my regular areas. Good luck!

-- Doreen Davenport (livinginskin@yahoo.com), March 18, 2000.

Doreen, that is why we perimeter poison, or they would be sleeping in bed with us! Vicki

-- Vicki McGaugh (vickilonesomedoe@hotmail.com), March 18, 2000.

My pest control guy suggested that I try grits (NOT instant). He said that when the ants eat them, they swell up and they explode. The trick is, though, to sprinkle them gently on and around the hill. Any disturbance of the hill usually causes the ants to abandon the hill, and they just turn up again a few days later in a different spot in the yard. So far, it seems to be working pretty well. I've been doing it since the beginning of April, and every now and then I have a new nest come up, but not nearly as frequently as before. Also, the grits plan requires some patience because it can take up to a week to destroy the entire hive. Go out and feed them every couple of days. Personally, I enjoyed feeding them to death. Good luck.

-- Sabrina (sabrinalaw@hotmail.com), May 27, 2001.

Hello everyone, After hearing various stories of people, unconscious after rural car accidents, dying of overwhelming fire ant stings I began to investigate methods of fire ant control. Urban (rural)legend or not, I felt compelled to try something to control these ants that had no natural enemies in our area. We discovered the "Logic" brand of fire ant control. Logic is a growth regulator, that when consumed prevents the queen from laying eggs that normally would develop into worker ants. The ants live out their normal lifespan of six to eight weeks and then die and are not replaced. The typical poisons can disturb a mound and cause it to move as workers die off, and many mounds now develop with more than one queen, making poisoning less successful as well as all the other hazards.

Many of our indigenous ants have returned and those horrid mounds are gone. Have any of you accidently stepped on one, and had your feet sink down into it? Luckily I am young enough to have gotten out of there quickly... Now the gophers are back...

-- Jerry (neljer@txcyber.com), May 27, 2001.