Fire Ants (Santa Fe: neighborhood, live in, moving to)

[Mattie Jo]

hi,

you say there are some fire ants in central new mexico or just harvester? the fire ants go after you. i have had them come into my house at night and bite me while in bed. no matter what I did I could not get rid of them. their mounds can be a foot high. they are very agressive. I would rather deal with rattlesnakes at least they run. if you happen to accidently sit on a fire ant mound they can swam all over you and actually kill you. they are destroying a lot of bird and small mammal life.

[Nil]

I've seen the harvester ants here, not the "true" fire ants. If you casualy ask a New Mexican if we have fire ants they will probably answer yes. Most people here think fire ants when it's truly the harvester ants.

These ants arnt too agresive, as long as you dont disturb there mound. They are pretty easy to manage, I dont remember any coming into the house.

The mounds I've seen for the harvesters can be over 1' tall and they have cleared vegitation from the mounds up to ~7' diamiter.

[LasCrucesGardener]

It is my understanding that the native NM fire ant found abundantly in my garden in Dona Ana county is the tiny red beast with a bit that is very itchy. The bigger fire ants are imported. The tiny ones are on you without your knowing it and so you get multiple bites.

I have just gotten acquainted with the harvester ant which has cleaned out all the marigold seeds I just planted.

[Cathy4017]

Originally Posted by Mattie Jo

Thank you all for the information. A map just showed areas where there were fire ants, and dona ana was the only one. So evidentally they have not traveled elsewhere

For some reason, they have fireant bait here at both Lowe's and Home Depot in Alamogordo/Otero county, which is 70 miles northeast of Dona Ana/Las Cruces. But I know what fireants are, having spent the last 10-15 years fighting them in West Texas. I haven't seen them here--YET.

Harvester ants are NOT fireants, and they're downright friendly compared to fireants. I've never had anything HURT like fireant bites, and they are vicious, aggressive little b**tards, as you already know! So far I have not seen fireants here in Otero county, so I'm hoping that we don't have them.

One thing that really helped was to treat the entire yard with Amdro 2-3 times a season....and sprinkle talcum powder along the baseboards of the house. They will not cross it--at least it worked for me in WT.

I have no doubt that they'll keep spreading north. They worked their way north and west to Texas, so it would not surprise me if they appear here and farther north as time goes on.

[WasSoggyInSeattle]

And they are not uniform in size. If you are unlucky enough to disturb a nest you can quickly see they are all different sizes and not the great big red ants (when I was a kid in TX we had these, but the fire ants pretty much wiped them out) we find here in NM.

Also, they don't drown, or at least not easily. They form huge balls of ants and will rotate around to keep from drowning as they ride out the flood waters. Nasty buggers for sure.

As Informer stated, you get bit by one of these, you certainly know it. And you are never "lucky" enough to get bit by one - they swarm you and bite you all at once.

We lost baby chicks because as soon as the chicks started to crack out of their shell, the ants would go in the crack and 'eat' the chick. Did I mention they are nasty buggers???

[WasSoggyInSeattle]

Cathy, I tried to give you rep points but it says i have to spread 'em around. That's exactly how we (my parents) treated them in the DFW area of TX... Amdro and talcum powder. Another good thing, is to spray WD-40 around. We'd do that camping or when we were watching the fireworks on the Trinity River levee's in Ft Worth. Find a spot with no ants, spray a circle of WD-40 and the legs of your chair and sit.

They would get in our swimming pool at the apts we lived in in Ft Worth when first married - sting/bite the piddly-dinks out of you... have to actually pull them off as they would be all wadded up just biting the crap out of you... I don't miss those days.

My parents are now in Eastern NM and so far they still don't have fireants there... knock on wood, or cross-fingers... whatever works!

[Cathy4017]

Thanks anyway, Soggy....!

It sort of upset me when I went to Lowe's after I moved here...and saw the fireant bait in the stores. I figured it would be too cold and dry for them here! I'm keeping my fingers crossed that I don't see them.

Getting into a pool and stinging is news to me...ugh. They're just evil!!

Aren't your folks in Portales? You're far enough north with a colder climate that you probably won't ever see them, unless we get unlucky enough, and they adapt. I don't miss them at all either.....painful, pus-filled bites that itch for days after they quit hurting!

We did not have them in West Texas at all until about 15-20 years ago. I stepped in my first mound in deep east Texas in the 1970s in Jasper...OUCH.

They were not in Midland in 1977 when I moved there, and they are not in WT where my parents live, about 125 miles south. I don't know what the difference is, either, why we had them in Midland--and they don't have them south of there, even now.

[WasSoggyInSeattle]

DFW area was COVERED in them. My Dad would 'trap' gophers and before he could get to the traps after work they would be little more than skeletons because of the fireants. Wicked, that's all I can say.

Yep, parents are about 25 miles south of Portales in a little "town" called Pep (about 10 miles south of Dora) on 206, I think that's the highway).

[LasCrucesGardener]

I have both the tiny NM fireants (not the Texas ants) AND the harvester ants. I planted literally hundreds of marigold seeds along borders where I wanted to discourage aphids around rose bushes, but the harvester ants literally carried them away. I even tried to take one away from one of the ants and they wouldn't let it go! They left behind just a very few.

The tiny fire ants, according to the University are New Mexico natives they have a fierce bite and leave a blister that bigger than the ant, very itchy. Haven't seen any of the more typical Texas fire ants. The smaller ant is somewhat agressive when disturbed, they don't drown.

Amdro does seem to work. It was the recommendation. I will try the talc and WD 40.

[Poncho_NM]

I would think WD40 would be a pollutant. It is a petroleum based product. I would stick with known products used designed for ant's. I used some ant graduals about five years and it wiped out all the ant colonies for about three years.


Rich