Fire ants are probably among the more vicious of the ant colony. They bite; and their bites, (like how the English would put it) stings like the devil!!! Generally, a fire ant has an aggressive nature and when disturbed, is quick to attack people and animals.
Fire ants look very much like an ordinary house or garden ants, about 0.04 to 0.125 of an inch long.
The Little Fire Ant is tan and the Imported Fire Ant is red and black. The Southern Fire ant is reddish-brown. Any of these can nest under the slab of a patio, garage or townhouse.
Difference from the other house species: their excruciating stings.
The fire ant grips the skin with its mandibles or jaws and stings its victim several times in a circular pattern around the point of mandible attachment.
The fire ant’s sting injects toxic venom (similar to that of wasps, hornets and bees), which causes a painful, burning sensation. The venom contains alkaloids with relatively little protein, which is different compare to other stinging insects’ venom. Most individuals who are stung will experience a swollen area followed by a growth of a pustule in a day or so which may become infected.
In some cases, individuals may become hypersensitive to proteins in fire ants venom and upon subsequent stings, develop allergic reactions.
The greatest danger the fire ant’s venom poses is too young children, due to multiple stings. A small percentage (probably less than 0.5%) of individuals stung by fire ants experience a systemic anaphylactic reaction, which usually occurs within minutes of a sting and vary in severity. People have died from anaphylaxis after only a few fire ants sting. Anyone stung by fire ants and displaying the following distinct symptoms of hives, weakness, nausea, allergy, diarrhoea, skin infection, fever and flu, wheezing, shortness of breath or confusion should be given immediate medical attention.
Fire ants also interfere with hay harvesting operations because their sting is fairly agonizing. Further, fire ants disrupt the maintenance of pastures and some crops by causing damage to very young plants, ripe fruits and berries. They occasionally attack newly hatched poultry and the young of ground-nesting wild birds. Helpless newborn animals, domestic and wild, have been killed by swarms of the worker ants. The farmers too are loomed with fire ant mounds on their grounds. These elevated earthen mounds range from three to thirty-six inches high, can erect damage to machinery, hinder mowing operations and reduce land values in heavily-infested areas. From the normal consumers’ point of view, fire ants are known to cause damage to homes, buildings, air-conditioning units, and other electrical equipment.
A fire ant colony consists of three castes (forms) — queens, males and workers.
The ant colony is usually started by a single queen, but some early-staged colonies are known to contain up to five queens.
The Queen is an egg-laying female ant with which the winged males will mate with.
The worker fire ants are wingless, sterile females and differ in size.
Older worker ants collect food for the colony using foraging tunnels that extend twenty-five meters from the mound and six to twelve meters underground.
Once the food is located, the forager ant returns to the tunnel, laying a pheromone trail for other worker ants to follow.
Insects, spiders, myriapods, earthworms, and other small invertebrates make up the usual diet of the fire ants. They also attack young, unprotected animals, such as newborn calves and pigs and newly-hatched quail, poultry or ground-nesting birds and young rabbits. Fire ants are attracted to sugar and honeydew and are known to feed on carrion. These workers also defend the ant nest. Younger workers, however, care for the developing brood like eggs, larvae and pupae.
The problem of effectively eradicating fire ants has baffled scientists and the government for decades. Currently, there is no single, universal solution to the fire ant problem. However, Pest Control London unique “colony” ant solution is designed to eliminate the entire ant nests once and for all completely.
All one needs to do is to place a small quantity of Fast Ant Bait (each sachet can be used for 4 or 5 applications depending on dosage) around the ants-infested area and ants’ path. The ants would automatically be attracted, hallucinated and induced to kill each other without any additional effort from the user. During the next 24 hours, customers will start to notice bits and pieces of dead ants’ carcasses around the ant bait and within the next 3 days, the entire ant colony would be destroyed and all the ants in the infested areas would be killed! 100% Guaranteed.
Article provided by https://www.pantherpestcontrol.co.uk
Shellie Olivares is a dedicated home blogger who has been blogging for over six years. She covers everything home related. Shellie also loves writing posts about her travels to Europe with her husband and two children.
