![]() ![]() After a year, survey your property and identify the “hot spots” where LFA are still present. The best way to manage LFA around your home, is to treat your entire property with a bait every 4-6 weeks for at least a one year period. This approach has proven to be more effective than toxic sprays and has an added benefit of minimizing the use of pesticides. Worker ants feed on the bait, and when they return to the nest, regurgitate some to share with other workers and the queen. Baits are made from a food that is attractive to ants and laced with a small quantity of slow-acting toxin. Therefore, solely relying on contact sprays to control for LFA means you are having little impact on the infestation overall.ĭecades ago, scientists researching better ways of controlling ants found that using a bait was more effective. This often leads to a cycle of spraying to gain temporary relief, a fast recovery by the ants, and spraying again. Killing off these older worker ants just means the queens will lay some more eggs. The other 90% of the colony is out of view tucked away in the nest. The trail of ants we see are only the older workers out and about looking for food. But using contact sprays is rarely successful for controlling LFA. Often, our first reaction on seeing Little Fire Ants (LFA) is to grab a can of insect spray and let them have it. Granular barriers also need to be watered before they are activated, while water often inactivates baits. The active ingredient list will usually contain one or more chemicals with names ending in “- thrin”, like “bifenthrin”, “cyfluthrin”, etc. Many granular barriers contain synthetic pyrethroids. It is easy to confuse granular barriers with granular baits, so it is important to read the label carefully. This helps the binding process needed for the chemicals to work. The chemicals in granular barrier treatments need to be wetted to become active. The ants could be repelled by the smell of the barrier granules and not feed on the bait. If you use the same spreader for both jobs, it is possible you might taint the baits with traces of the barrier granules. However, it is good practice to have 2 spreaders – one for use with baits and the other for the barrier treatment (mark each one with a marker pen so you know which is which). Granular barrier treatments can be spread using a simple seed spreader, just like baits. Barrier treatments usually have a residual activity and can provide protection for months. As ants and other insects crawl over the treated areas, they come into contact with the toxin and are killed. Barrier treatments are insecticides that come in liquid or granular form and are sprayed or sprinkled around areas where ants are to be excluded. ![]()
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