Fire Ant Facts And Control Tips For Edmond Properties
Fire ants are an invasive species that first debuted on American soil in the early 1900s, arriving here via ships from South America. They live mainly in southern states, but they can also be found here in Oklahoma. While it has been impossible to fully eradicate these tiny biting pests, keeping a regular schedule for fire ant control for your Edmond home is extremely important.
Fire ants in Edmond need to continue to be regulated because they can cause health risks due to their aggressive behavior. The painful pustules that result from fire ant bites and their ability to kill domestic animals, wildlife, livestock, and even humans on rare occasions, make them a danger. Without proper fire ant treatment in Edmond around your yard and property, these ants will infest and damage buildings, crops, and farming equipment.
Why There Are So Many Fire Ants In Your Yard
Since fire ants thrive in dry, warm environments, summers in Oklahoma make your yard the perfect breeding ground. They will nest and set up camp in almost any soil to dig tunnels and build a mound, as long as the earth is in an open, sunny area. These mounds house their colonies, which contain at least one queen, sometimes several. Within a month, a fire ant colony can grow by the thousands. Fire ants like to stay on the move, and they migrate rapidly, quickly spreading and building more fire ant mounds in your yard. This makes avoiding them and their vicious bites more difficult.
Why Fire Ants Bite
Fire ants are naturally very aggressive and will violently attack anyone or anything that disturbs their mounds. They attack as a group, and their bites, or stings, cause immediate and intense pain that turns into itchy, irritated skin, lasting for hours or even days. If someone is allergic to the fire ant venom, they can go into anaphylaxis from a single bite. Research shows their venom contains a poison that directly affects the nervous system. Some people have reported seeing hallucinations after receiving many fire ant bites.
How To Clear Your Property Of Fire Ants
Although it is virtually impossible to remove fire ants from your property entirely due to their invasive nature, the most effective way to kill them is with the baiting and mound drench method.
- Baiting: Uses specific fire ant bait to kill the queen and worker ants that live deep inside the colony.
- Mound Drenching: Uses insecticides to treat the mounds to kill the ants near the surface and active outside the mounds.
Both methods work best in the early mornings and late evenings and during the cooler months when they are not active or are out foraging. At this point, fire ant treatment in Edmond is about controlling the number of fire ants living in your yard since eliminating them is not a possibility. Hiring the experts from Summit Pest Solutions is the best way to treat a fire ant infestation in your yard. They spot, treat, and take preventative measures to keep these aggressive pests away from your yard and home.
What To Do If Fire Ants Come Back
While setting up regular pest control in Edmond with Summit Pest Solutions is the best way to control fire ants, treatment will temporarily take care of them. Besides setting up a consistent pest control schedule, there are a few other preventative measures you can take to increase the effectiveness of the pest control treatments:
- Keep outdoor and indoor areas clean from food debris. Limit access to shelter, water, and food.
- Eliminate all standing water. This will also reduce mosquitoes and other pests.
- Regular outdoor maintenance, such as lawn care and weeding, can help discourage ants from setting up roots on your property.
Pest control treatments of fire ants are the best way to keep them from returning and causing harm to your property and possibly you and your pets. Contact Summit Pest Solutions to get started on a regular pest maintenance schedule. Call for a free quote today!
