A novel nutritionally based gel bait was developed to control fire ants year round. Invading fire ants tend to disrupt the effectiveness of termite control by occupying the underground termite stations. A new method to eliminate invading ants year-round was required to accomplish this objective. The bait matrix was formulated in a way that 3 basic nutrient groups (lipids, protein, and carbohydrates) were equally balanced to cover the seasonal nutritional requirements of the colonies. The test areas included open fields, urban areas, agricultural plots. The number of ant mounds per area were flagged, marked and counted at the bigining of the experiment (Dec, 2002) and at regular intervals of 3 weeks to the end August. Active ingredients were boric acid at 5 and 1% and hydramethylnon at 0.03% concentrations. An adjecent plot remained untreated and was used as the cotrol. Density of mounds in the treated areas remained constant until the beginig of spring; but they have been steadily declining through out the summer. The control plot has shown a slight increase in mound density during the same period of time.
Species 1: Hymenoptera Formicidae Solenopsis invicta (Red imported fire ant)
Keywords: suppression, mound density
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