Earlier today my mom and I were discussing ways to kill fire ants. She came up with a rather creative idea. Stick a wire into a fire ant hill, and then send a huge electric current through it. This would then kill the fire ants. However, my dad says the current would dissipate in the ground. I am not sure what would happen, though I have a few theories, one of them being the hill would explode, or, and this would take a gigantic current, it would turn the hill into glass (assuming the hill is made of sand).
Who is right here? What would happen if you tried this?
I’m not sure exactly what would happen if you tried that method…but a couple of things that have worked for us…we moved part of one ant bed (just a little bit) into another…they fight till they kill each other including the queen…granted it takes a good bit of time to do this in a large yard…and a VERY bored person so my neighbors just pour gas on the beds and light them up…just…no marshmallow roasts I’m not sure how ant flavour smores would turn out.
Your dad’s right. Essentially, the earth would conduct the electricity around the ants, rather than the current passing through their bodies. cenceptually, that would be no different than an ant walking on a bare high-boltage wire. Since all parts of the ant and the wire it is on are are the same voltage level, there is no current flow through the ant.
You could try “jitterbugging” the ant colony…rolling a tank, or other heavy armored vehicle back and forth over the tunnel systems, until they collapse.
Sure, some might say that calling in an Armored Cav. unit to deal with insects might be a little “extreme,” but massively unequal escalation is really the only sure way of dealing with “flareups” like these.
Although anteaters are terrific ant predators, their cousin, the armadillo, is already in Texas, but has had little effect on RIFA populations. Good biocontrol agents are 1) highly host specific, 2) limited by their host availability, and 3) able to survive in the climate where they are introduced to control the pest species.
Anteaters consume a wide range of ants, not just fire ants and, except for the giant anteater, live in trees and usually eat ants that nest in trees. Because the RIFA does not usually inhabit trees, the anteater wouldn’t have much of a chance to eat RIFAs. Also, anteaters are tropical and would not survive cold weather as well as fire ants do. Importing anteaters as biocontrol agents of the RIFA is an idea based on comic strips, not scientific observations.
A lightning bolt would explode all of the little ants and turn some of the sand into glass (it makes really cool glass sculptures, if you can manage to get the fragile things out of the ground without breaking them). So it seems to me that all you need to do is come up with some way of generating a few million volts with a few hundred thousand amps of current. Just sticking a 120v house cable into it will leave you sadly disappointed though.
There are baits you can use to kill off colonies. Boiling water if applied repeatedly will either kill the occupants of a mound or persuade them to move elsewhere (you’re also sterilizing the soil by doing this, which is not necessarily a great idea). Dumping the contents of one mound into another doesn’t work well these days, since they’ve pretty much stopped recognizing each other as hostile (you’d have to import colonies from far away).
Forget the electrocution idea. It’s not going to work, and if you blow out the transformers serving the area, all the neighbors will want to stake you to an anthill.
hey my bro suggested you try the water then stick the wire in and turn on the electric…at least if the ants got wet you’d have something to conduct with.
I have no problem ridding my yard of fire ants using a cheap commercial product (starts with “A”, ends with “o”). In 17+ years I have bought two jugs of it. I only had to buy the 2nd one since the active ingredient in the first had gone way past its exp. date and wasn’t working anymore. I have barely touched the 2nd jug. You have to be persistent and patrol the yard after a big rain following a dry spell. (And having neighbors doing the same is a big help. I am not lucky in this regard.)
I put a capful down less than a dozen times a year.
Hardly a significant effort compared to boiling and carrying water, lighting a gas fire or setting up a lightning class electrical discharge.
(I know my situation isn’t the same as for ranchers, but if you have less than an acre, this is the cheapest, simplest solution.)
:smack: :smack: Good grief, ya’ll are going about this totally wrong. All you need is some of that cheap puffed cereal like Malt-o-meal (you know the kind that comes in bags like chips) and you spread that on the ground around the ant hill. The ants gorge themselves, and feed this to their queen as well, but then the cereal begins to expand once it’s been eaten. Goodbye ants
The best part is you don’t have to worry about your neighbors treating their yards, because many times your neighbors colonies will come get the leftover cereal, and there they go as well. It also isn’t as damaging to the environment as chemicals, etc.
c) Fire ants LIKE electricity. They love it. If they get into a person’s home, you can count on them being attracted to all the electrical outlets.
So, if you try to electrify the mound, you’re liable just to stir them up into a frenzy. You’ll fry a few here and there, but you’re more likely to excite them into swarming toward the source of the power (probably your house!).
