Fire Ants In Grapevine

Fire Ants In Grapevine

Fire ants in Grapevine are a scary reality of life in Texas. Their painful, stinging bites can be especially harmful to people who are allergic to them.   Often, fire ants build their colonies in electrical equipment, like an air conditioner. I once had an air conditioner stop working and it turned out that the electric box was full of fire ants. The technician that came out said he saw it all the time.  He thought they were attracted to the humming sound. Between the ants chewing on the cables and the soil that the ants move into the equipment, they can cause serious damage.

Fire ants can also be harmful to your grass when they build a colony there. If you’ve found their large mounds in your landscape, then you know how frustratingthe situation can be. Besides the potential danger to your family and pets, those mounds mess up the roots of you grass and the tunnels affect the lawn above.  In some cases, it is very hard to get grass to grow again over a large mound after the ants have gone. . Fire ants are efficient when it comes to building these mounds. They’ve been known to build as many as 300 mounds in a one-acre section.

Fire ants look similar to many helpful, native ant species. That’s why it’s important to ask a professional to diagnose the problem. Worker fire ants typically have shiny black abdomens with the rest of their body being a dark reddish brown. Most are between 1/16 and ¼ inch long. Knowing which kind of ant is infesting your yard will go a long way toward helping you efficiently solve the problem.

Fire Ants in Grapevine – What to do

Usually people try to eliminate fire ants from their yard by treating individual mounds. We’ve found that this approach is not as effective as using a broadcast method that treats a larger area. If you are seeing one mound, there is probably another in the lawn that you don’t see.  They usually have exit routes.  When the problem is particularly severe, we may recommend broadcasting a fire ant bait twice a year and then following up with individual mound treatments for those really stubborn colonies.

Based on scientific evidence and our own experience, we believe that a twice-yearly application of fire ant bait is often the most effective treatment method. Fire ants mistake the bait for food, and they bring it back to their colony where it is ingested by the queen. The poison effectively wipes out the colony. When applied in the spring and fall, this approach is cost-effective and very respectful of the environment. Customers often see the effects of the bait application within just a few days. Typically, it is not necessary to follow up with an individual-mound treatment because the bait proves to be so effective.

Contact a local lawn care company to treat your fire ants.