By Mike Isbell
University of Georgia
Volume XXVIII
|
One Sunday afternoon, a “Discovery Channel” program about
dangerous insects
had a segment on imported fire ants. My daughter, still
scratching from the
fire ant stings she’d gotten a few days earlier, was very
interested.
The “Discovery Channel” and real life came together for me
the following Tuesday.
I got a call from a mother whose 2-year-old daughter was stung
at least 20 times
by what she thought were fire ants.
The little girl had a severe reaction to the stings. The
quick response of
EMTs and emergency room doctors probably saved the little
girl’s life.
The doctors attending her needed to know the ant species that
stung her, so
they could identify the toxins and antigens in the ant venom.
They wanted to
try to prevent another severe reaction.
That’s where I came in. The mother asked me to identify the
ants.
Ant identification
I knew just about enough to identify big ants and little
ones, red ants and
black ones, carpenter ants and fire ants. But I collected some
from the nest
and sent them to University of Georgia Extension Service
entomologists.
The ants that stung the little girl weren’t aggressive like
fire ants. And
the sting marks didn’t look like fire ant stings.
And sure enough, they weren’t fire ants. They were “thief
ants.” They’re in
the same genus but are a different species.
Ant identification isn’t easy, because there are so many
kinds. In a recent
survey, entomologists in the UGA College of Agricultural and
Environmental Sciences
identified at least 85 species of ground-dwelling ants. That
doesn’t include
the ones that live in homes or trees (like carpenter ants).
Thief ants aren’t high on the list of ants to worry about.
UGA Extension entomologist
Dan Suiter, who specializes in ants and other home insect
pests, says there
aren’t many in Georgia. He hardly ever sees them.
The big three in Georgia
For most people, only three ant species are worth fussing
over.
Fire ants, of course, get all of the attention. Most of the
insecticides marketed
for ant control are for fire ants. A great many products can
effectively kill
them. But you have to be persistent, because even if you get
them all, more
will come.
Argentine ants (“sugar ants”) can come from a long way off to
your kitchen.
Suiter says he measured one Argentine ant trail 350 feet long.
So your ants
may be coming from your neighbor’s yard or your neighbor’s
neighbor’s.
The best news about these ants is that they don’t sting or
bite. Or if they
do, it’s more like a little pinch than a fire ant’s poison
injection.
The worst news is that they’re hard to control. You won’t
find a nest. They
live in moist landscape mulch. Their population peaks in
September, and when
the weather turns cold, they move in with you. Indoors, they
live behind wallboards
and other hard-to-reach spaces.
Suiter says a fire-ant product with trade name “Over-n-Out,”
used on the mulch
around your house, controls Argentine ants, too. It can help
prevent their building
up a big fall population.
Carpenter ants are mostly a nuisance, Suiter says. These big
ants can cause
some damage to wood. But when you see them in your house,
you’re most likely
to be relieved that they aren’t termites.
Virtually any over-the-counter ant-killer will kill carpenter
ants. You can
actually eliminate them, because the colonies grow very
slowly.
The trick is that you have to find them. They feed mostly at
night. If you
can find them feeding, follow them with a flashlight. They’ll
likely lead you
straight to the tree where they’re nesting in a hole. Pouring
a gallon of Malathion
solution into the tree hole will get them.
