Fire ants and You

Most people think of fire ants as a mere annoyance but there is so much more to them. They can use their bodies to build rafts and bridges, fly hundreds of meters in the air to mate, and dig massive tunnels for the colony. Fire ants use their jaws to bite or latch onto your skin, then inject venom into your skin with their stinger. Symptoms of the bite/sting can range from discomfort and itching to 1% of the population that have hypersensitive responses. Reproductive male and female fire ants have wings, used to fly up in the nuptial dance; the mated females lose their wings and try to set up a new colony, the male’s just die. Their tunnels can go as deep as 6 meters below ground. This is one reason why most insecticides are useless in their effect on the ant nest. Some pesticides merely build a surface obstruction that force ants to relocate the nest and rarely does it actually kill the colony or queen.

gogreenpestcontrol.ca Ladner Tsawwassen Delta B.C. Randy Bilesky

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