I heard there is an easy way to kill fire ants with salt or suger or some household thing.Is this true and if so what do you use to kill them?
While any attempts to control imported fire ants over large areas are currently impractical, there are two basic methods that can successfully control fire ants within a limited area: treatment of individual mounds and broadcast treatments.
Individual Mound Treatments - There are several proven methods that can be employed to control individual colonies of fire ants. Insecticidal mound drenches with common insecticides are generally effective against fire ant colonies. The mound is flooded with a large volume of a liquid containing a contact insecticide such as carbaryl, diazinon, dursban, et cetera. Numerous insecticides are currently labeled for this use. A major problem with this method is that the queen is sometimes too deep within the colony to be contacted by the toxicant. Care must be taken not to disturb the mound prior to application of the drench. A disturbance will alert the colony and the queen may be taken deeper into the mound. Application of insecticidal surface dusts or granules have a limited effect on a colony if they are not watered in. The dissolved granules must come into direct contact with the ants to have any effect. As in mound drenches, care must be taken not to disturb the colony prior to application. The queen can be taken to a point within the mound where she may not come in contact with the poison. Some insecticides are marketed as injectants. These are usually more effective than surface applications or mound drenches but are also more expensive and can be dangerous if not handled properly. Fumigants are also commercially available. Again, they are expensive and dangerous if not handled properly. A number of fire ant baits are available. These can be used for treating individual mounds or for broadcast treatment of larger areas. The bait should be uniformly applied around the mound 0.3 to 1.0 meters away and not on the mound itself. Baits are much slower than the control methods listed above but are generally safer, cheaper and more effective in the long run.
Broadcast Treatments - A number of fire ant baits are commercially available for broadcast treatments. Baits are composed of an inert pregelled corn carrier and soybean oil. A toxicant (either a slow-acting insecticide or an insect growth regulator) is incorporated into the oil. Foragers find the bait and carry it back to the colony. Once there, the ants will ingest the soybean oil/toxicant and begin feeding other members of the colony. Eventually, the toxicant is spread throughout the mound and all members of the colony are affected. Broadcasting baits has a number of advantages. Unlike individual mound treatments, colonies need not be “located” in order for them to be treated. Foraging workers quickly retrieve the broadcast granules and carry them back to their nestmates. Broadcasting baits is a great deal less labor intensive than individual treatments and per acre costs are dramatically lower than with any of the other methods. Some of the disadvantages to broadcasting baits include: lack of specificity to fire ants; baits dissolve when they come in contact with water rendering them irretrievable by fire ants; retrieval of the baits is temperature dependent; and baits are slow-acting.
Biological Control - A large number of arthropod species have been identified from nests of imported fire ants. Unfortunately, the vast majority are transients and seem to have no specific relationship with the ants (Collins 1992). However, many of these are known to be endoparasitic, socially parasitic or predaceous (Silviera-Guido et al. 1973, Williams 1980) and studies continue evaluating their effectiveness. Fungal, protozoan and viral pathogens have also been identified in association with fire ants (Jouvenaz 1983). Three potential biological control agents have been identified in South America for intensive study. These studies, if successful, may lead to their introduction into the United States. The organisms under consideration are: Pseudacteon sp. flies (Diptera: Phoridae) ca. 17 spp.; Thelohania solenopsae a protozoan disease and; Solenopsis dagerrei (Hymenoptera: Formicidae), a workerless social parasite.
Phorid flies are known to be parasitic on a number of ant species. Some are thought to be host specific to imported fire ants. The adult flies oviposit on foraging fire ant workers outside the mound; the maggots migrate into the ant’s head capsule where they feed. This eventually leads to decapitation of the ant. As interesting as this phenomena is, the major effect of these flies is to cause the ants to cease foraging. In the presence of the fly, worker ants will retreat into the colony to prevent oviposition by the phorid. This disruptive response to the fly restricts the ability of the colony to feed itself and may “even the playing field” so that other ant species can become more competitive with fire ants.
The microsporidian disease Thelohania solenopsae is an obligate intracellular pathogen of fire ants. Preliminary field studies on populations of the black imported fire ant, S. richteri, carried out in Argentina indicated that decreasing densities of fire ants were associated with increasing presence of this pathogen. These data suggest that this pathogen may be an important factor in reducing fire ant numbers by weakening the colonies. Although the vertical transmission of this disease is understood, the horizontal transmission is not.
Solenopsis (Labauchena) dagerrei is a parasitic ant that attaches to the fire ant queen and redirects fire ant workers to tend the brood of the parasite to the detriment of the colony’s own larvae. S. dagerrei is intriguing because it lacks a worker caste; only queens and males are produced. The presence of this parasitic ant has a debilitating effect on colony growth and the proportion of sexual reproductives produced in the colony. Queens of S. dagerrei enter fire ant colonies and attach themselves to the mother queen. Previous studies have demonstrated that this parasite inhibits the fire ant queen and her egg production; thus causing the fire ant colony to collapse and eventually die out.
To date, none of these natural enemies has been sufficiently evaluated to determine if, in and of themselves, they might produce any true suppression of fire ant populations. In all likelyhood, parasites, predators and pathogens will be used in combinations to reduce colony fitness. Reduction in colony vitality could cause greater mortality under stress conditions and allow for better competition from native ant species
A few gallons of gas and a match should do the trick… 
It doesn’t really work (I have tried it), but, damn, it feels good after 10,000,000,000 of the little bastards bite the shit out of you.
::strike:: ::flick:: ::WHOOSH!!:: Back to hell with you sons-of-bitches!! ::fire dances in the eyes of Myndephuquer as he laughs maniacally::
Stomp some for me! Then stomp some more! Little fire ant bastards.
I tried that once. Not a chance, unless you first use a backhoe to dig up the nest. And then you better get ALL of them, REAL fast.
- Take one thermonuclear warhead of roughly 420 megatons with a conical distribution pattern.
- Coat liberally in light brown sugar.
- Detonate at point blank range over targeted redant hill.
- Repeat.
- Check for survivors.
- Repeat steps 1 through 4 as need be.
I live in North Carolina were the fire ants are just awful. I have tried all of the “home remedies” and they simply don’t work. I have never tried throwing sugar on the nest but I have a feeling they would like it.
The only thing in my opinion that really works is Diazinon. Don’t just spray it on the nest. If you just spray the nest you will find another nest a few weeks later 5 feet away. Spray your entire yard a couple of times in the spring. It really does keep them away all summer and it isn’t very expensive.
I never tried this for fire ants and so mainly I’m wondering if it would work. But one time when I had a nasty wasps’ nest underground, I took a can of indoor bug bomb (the sort that you open and vacate your home for 48 hours), cracked that puppy open and shoved it nozzle down directly into the hole. Needless to say, no wasps survived. Of course, chances are I killed every other microorganism in the soil as well, so don’t let the EPA catch you
Maybe fire ants are tougher in your neck of the woods, but Mom used to always use boiling water, and it seemed to work pretty well. Safe, too.