Re: OT: Fire Ants
- To: Multiple recipients of list <i*@rt66.com>
- Subject: Re: OT: Fire Ants
- From: "* A* M* <w*@Ra.MsState.Edu>
- Date: Wed, 28 May 1997 10:00:13 -0600 (MDT)
On Wed, 28 May 1997, Bill Shear wrote:
> >Fire ants (despite constant swollen knuckles) are beneficial in several
> >ways. On our farm we have:
> > 1) no slugs or snails
> > 2) no grasshoppers
> > 3) no catepillars
> >
> I had all of the above insects and fire ants when I lived at
> Starkville about 110 miles from where I now live. The best thing for
> snails and slugs is epsom salt. Like other salt, it dissolves them.
> Maybe they know this and won't come to soil that has been treated with
> epsom salt.
> Don't know if this works (the fire ant has only been
> reported a few times from extreme SE Virginia) but someone in Alabama
> told me that it is possible to get rid of fire ants by taking a shovel
> full of one mound and dumping it on another. Supposedly this starts a
> war among the ants in which one of the mounds will be wiped out by the
> other. Keep doing this until you have just one mound, then destroy it
> with hot soapy water. Sounds too good to be true.
I have heard of many methods of treating fire ant mounds and most
of them do not work. Feeding them grits does not work, nor does the
electric shock treatment. The sure-fire instant killer is to pour
gasoline on the mound, but do this only in fields or open spots and not
while you are smoking a cigarette because it will kill all vegetation and
may cremate the gardener.
Don't buy the expensive Amdro Fire Ant Killer because it takes
days to work, if it works at all. The cheapest and best treatment for
where I live is diazinon. It usually works overnight.
Rains cause the development of fire ant mounds to increase, so
after each rain look for the beginnings of a mound (little piles of
granulated soil) and sprinkle it with diazinon.
Hope this helps.
Walter Moores
Enid Lake, MS (where we have had over 6 inches of rain since last
weekend and I am out fire ant hunting to kill the critters before they
build a mound)
>
> We are just now becoming aware of the real dangers of pesticides--that
> some of them mimic mammalian hormones and can disrupt our development
> and reproduction. A group of scientists has recently advised that
> percieved "benefits" of pesticides not be taken into account when
> assessing their value; ANY health hazard should be deemed unacceptable
> in this process. I don't necessarily agree but it is interesting that
> this viewpoint is now becoming highly respectable.
>
> Two books to follow up on this: OUR CHILDRENS TOXIC LEGACY:HOW SCIENCE
> AND LAW FAIL TO PROTECT US FROM PESTICIDES by John Wargo, Yale U. Press,
> 1996, and PEST MANAGEMENT AT THE CROSSROADS by C.M. Benbrook et al,
> Consumers Union, 1996. See the reviews in AMERICAN SCIENTIST for March,
> 1997, p. 195.
>
> Bill Shear Department of Biology Hampden-Sydney College Hampden-Sydney
> VA 23943 (804)223-6172 FAX (804)223-6374 email<bills@tiger.hsc.edu>
>
>
