Hi,
I've posted a few times about our fire ant problem in our house in Central = Texas where in September 2010 we had a full infestation of fire ants within= our newly constructed house. But it seems, hopefully, that they're finall= y under control, but I wanted to post some notes about what we've seen in h= opes that others can give more info.
Wed, Dec 22nd our bug guy came out and sprayed inside the walls of our hous= e with some chemicals that he said would kill them within 30 minutes to an = hour, then he heavily baited outside the house. We didn't see any ants unt= il around Monday, Dec 27th when we saw about 10 ants come out in the bathro= om then nothing. Since then I saw two ants last month, both appeared to be= fully mature (larger than most) and that's been it... last one was almost = a month ago.
Granted we're in winter, but other then last week our temps have been in th= e 50's to 70's even hitting 80 once or twice. We even had a couple of week= s with little to no rain, which has often been a driving force for the ants= to move inside. But in the last month nothing.
My hypothesis is that the ants took in the bait and the influx we had a wee= k or so later were the workers just going where ever they could. Also the = two larger ants we saw in January I hope were just wondering workers that j= ust made it inside with the colony being gone.
Does this sound reasonable? If the colony was still alive I'd think they w= ould still be showing themselves, especially if they were spending the wint= er under the house foundation. =20
Also note to those who haven't read my former posts, the ants have been ent= ering our house through the pipes that come through the foundation. We had= termidor and some other chemicals sprayed in the wall voids which helped, = but nothing solved it. =20
I really hope as spring comes we don't start seeing a renewed influx of fir= e ants as it gets warmer, but given fire ants don't hibernate hopefully wha= t we're seeing is a good sign. =20
Thanks for any insight --
Sam Alex
last weekend we had sub-freezing temps but the last two weekends we've had = temps in the 60's, 70's, and even hit around 80 once.