There’s good evidence that not only fire ants, but other ant species are attracted to electrical equipment.
“Once ants in a switching mechanism bridge the gap between an open switch, they are shocked and electrocuted. The shocked ants release communication chemicals (pheromones) or other signals that attract other worker ants. The result is that switching unit can become tightly packed with the bodies of dead worker ants, causing a failure of the mechanism.”
Whether this mechanism becomes operative in electrical sockets (regardless of whether they’re in active use) I have no idea; but I’ve heard invasion/colonization by such means described by other homeowners. And while there are plenty of entry points in a home that are more convenient for fire ants, I don’t recall having a problem with them coming in via cracks around windows and doors (for instance).
A “hard freeze” is a descriptive term generally used to describe temps that fall below freezing for at least a few hours, sufficient to kill tender vegetation. Most of Texas (even the Gulf Coast region where I lived) gets hard freezes every winter; it’s not unusual for DFW to get into the teens a few times.
The range of the fire ant includes most of Texas (the panhandle is apparently still too cold for them) and much of the South, including places that get a goodly amount of cold weather and freezes (such as a large chunk of Tennessee).
The Gulf Coast (Houston) tends to get the occasional hard freeze- like a handful of nights per winter where the temperature is below freezing for a few hours in the early morning.
North Texas (Dallas) tends to get frequent temperatures below zero, and often it’s below freezing for most of the night. Sometimes we end up with back to back cold fronts, and end up with stretches where the highs are below freezing for a few days and the lows are in the lower teens/upper single digits- the week leading up to the 2011 Super Bowl is a good example- the lows were in the 10-15 F range, and the highs were in the mid-20s, and we had 2-3 bouts of ice/snow through there.
Not particularly terrible winter weather by say… Chicago, Boston or Minneapolis standards, but enough to make a sizeable dent in insect populations.
They seem as bad as ever here in central Texas (at least as far as I can tell). I have mounds popping up in my yard constantly. We used to have a lot more bugs in general than we do now, which as i understand it, is attributable to the fire ants. I’ve also heard that the decrease in horny toads (which used to be everywhere) and quail are tied to the fire ants. On the plus side, we used to have ridiculous amounts of chiggers and I don’t think I’ve been bitten in the last 15 years.
Four years ago, the crazy ants arrived in my yard and drove out the fire ants. For the next couple of years the crazy ants were swarming everywhere. Last year, the population of crazy ants declined dramatically and now they seem to be gone altogether and the fire ants are back. Anybody else experience this?