I’ll be using this article to give you tips on how to get rid of fire ants permanently.

Fire ants are not your ordinary insects, far from that. One of their most unique features is their aggressiveness. They deliver hard stings to both humans and animals, and these stings can cause severe irritations and nausea.

Have you experienced a fire ant sting before? If you have, then I know how you feel, if you haven’t, then lucky you as I’ll be revealing some control options in this guide.

Keep reading!

About Fire Ant Treatment

These are among the most aggressive insects known to man. They deliver ferocious stings and they aren’t afraid to come out and fight to protect their territory.

They build mounds just like most ants would. Their favorite building spots being open gardens, parks, athletic fields, and pretty much anywhere there is an open field and direct access to sunlight.

If an intruder, be it human, animal, or other insects, tries to break their mounds, they will come out in large numbers and attack until they kill or chase away the intruder.

Their colonies are usually large and can have as many as 500,000 workers. Imagine having a garden filled with these guys!

Being violent is bad enough, digging up mounds and tunnels under your garden soil is unacceptable.

These pests can also destroy plants, telephone wires, and some components of an air conditioning unit. For some reason, they don’t mind hanging around places where there is electrical current.

Whatever the case may be, these pests have to go.

Below are tips on how you can get rid of them.

How To Get Rid Of Fire Ants In Yards And Homes

Follow these tips –

  • First, Find All Their Mounds

A fire ant colony is usually characterized by several mounds, due to the number of tunnels dug by the workers. More likely than not, you will come across quite a good number of these mounds around your yard.

Some may not be as obvious as the others, since the fire ants can build their homes anywhere that suits them, so you have to do a thorough sweep of the area and locate them all.

After you have found all of them, you can take sticks and insert them into the ground right next to the mounds so you can easily do them when you return.

Fire Ants are hard workers who are busy most hours of the day but return home at night to rest. This means that the night time is the best time to launch your attack on their dens, as they will all be around.

Visibility at night isn’t as good, but the sticks you inserted I the ground will help you locate the mounds you found during the day.

  • Drown Them All With Hot Water

A hot water bath is very effective against fire ants. The heat from the water will kill them and the water will knock them off balance and drown them.

Wait until it gets dark before you launch your attack.

Boil an amount of water that will be enough for the amount of fire ant hills you find. You can mix the water with liquid soap to ensure they can’t swim out and to hasten the drowning process.

When you get to the mound, pour the hot water into the entrance as quickly as you can and move on to the next mound. Remember, fire ants are very aggressive and they will attack you if you are there for too long.

Just pour in the hot water and leave!

The good thing about using the hot water flush method is that it is totally eco friendly. No plants or humans will be harmed, just the fire ants.

Move from one mound to the other pouring in the hot water, drowning all the ants inside.

Water will flow as long as there are channels for it to pass through, that is another reason why this method is very effective, as the tunnels cannot serve as hiding places for the ants.

Killing Fire Ants With Dawn Dish Soap

To make a homemade fire ant killer with Dawn, spray the colony’s entry points with water mixed with Dawn dish soap. This breaks down the ant’s exoskeleton and causes death by dehydration.

  • Add Cayenne Pepper Or Garlic To The Hot Water Mixture

The hot water drowning method can work just fine on its own, but if you want to take the fight to the fire ants, then you can infuse some of their worst enemies – cayenne pepper and garlic!

All ants hate cayenne pepper and most insects cannot stand garlic, fire ants inclusive.

Adding both cayenne pepper and garlic to the hot water flush will significantly reduce the chances of the fire ant’s survival.

Take as many cloves of garlic as you need, as well as Cayenne pepper. Grind the garlic into a powdery form and throw it along with the pepper into the container where the water is being boiled.

Follow the same procedure by attacking at night when most or all of the fire ants are home. Pour the garlic/cayenne pepper/hot water mixture into the holes and get away as fast as you can to avoid being bitten.

This combo will ensure that the fire ants stand no chance of survival.

An extra tip is to pour the garlic/cayenne pepper/water mixture into a spray bottle. But do this after the water must have cooled off.

Take the spray bottle and visit other areas where the fire ants may be present, that’s besides their tunnels. Check the air conditioning vents, behind telephone boxes, and other cracks and crevices where they may be creeping through.

Hit them with the spray as you come across them, and also spray around the surface of the areas to keep more of them from returning.

This is one of the widely used home remedies to get rid of fire ants.

  • Poison The Colony

Having an underground ant colony of about 500,000 workers is no joke. Using a hot water flush may not be the most effective means to get rid of them all.

So what can you do in such an instance? Poison them!

Some pesticides take a few days before they kill the pests. The good thing about this type of pesticide is that it can be transferred from one insect to the other, and so on.

Go to any pest control store around your neighborhood and ask for it. You will come across many brands so you should check the label to see which can offer you the function you are looking for.

If you’re looking for a means of how to get rid of fire ants permanently, then this is it.

Find out the areas around your yard where the fire ants usually go and hunt for food. When you’ve discovered their favorite foraging spots, get some sweet-tasting/proteinous chunks of food and scatter it all over the area.

Apply the poisonous insecticide to the chunks of food and wait. The fire ant workers will locate the food and go for it, carrying some back to their underground tunnels.

As the workers interact with other workers and the queen in the colony, so will the poisonous pesticide spread among them.

As I mentioned earlier, this will take a few days before you see the effects then perfect poison as it gives the workers more than enough time to spread it among fire ants in the colony.

Be careful when you can pesticides like these. Also, be sure that they are kept out of children’s or pet’s reach when not in use. Proper storage is very important.

  • Use Boric Acid

Boric Acid can also kill fire ants very fast. You can buy some at a pest control store and apply it in areas where needed.

You can sprinkle the powder across your yard, in the areas where the ants usually go to forage. You can put some bait in place and sprinkle the acid all around it.

If the fire ants go for it, they’ll be dead.

Here are some tips on using baits for fire ants –

  • Apply the bait when the weather is fairly sunny, as this is when the fire ants will be very active around the mound and be willing to go and forage
  • Don’t place bait when it is raining or the weather is too hot. The fire ants will not bother going out in such conditions
  • You can but an ant-bait insect plate and place the bait in it. This will keep the bait dry and away from the reach of kids and pets
  • Call An Insect Extermination Service

This may be your first, or last resort.

If you’re not willing to go close to hard-biting fire ants, then you can call on the pros. Then again, if all your DIY efforts are not effective, then you should also call on the pros to get rid of the fire ants, especially if their colonies have grown beyond your control.

This will be the most expensive approach to dealing with fire ants, but you can trust that a good extermination service will get the job done once and for all.

Conclusion On What Kills Fire Ants

I hope this article on how to get rid of fire ants has been helpful.

Good luck, and take care.

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