Native and Imported Red Fire Ants Do Sting
Imported Fire ants are an aggressive type ant. The sting itself will normally cause reactions anywhere from a medium irritation at minimum to nausea or even more severe reactions in humans.
These red fire ants have also been known to repeatedly attack all animals that may intrude on their nesting areas. Red imported fire ants are very, very aggressive and they are known to attack people, plants, and all animals, as well as to cause serious damage to homes, buildings and air conditioning units as well as telephone wires. Workers in single queen colonies are territorial, foraging within their territory. Workers from the multiple queen colonies are not very territorial, they will freely move from one mound onto another, which has and will result in a very dramatic increase in the number of mounds that may be found per acre. Areas however that are found to be infested with single queen colonies contain anywhere from 50 to 160 mounds per single acre (rarely more than 8 million ants per acre) but in areas with multiple queen colonies, there may be 220 or more mounds and 50 million red fire ants per acre.
Red imported fire ant builds its mounds in almost any type of soil, but will prefer an open and sunny area such as pastures, parks, lawns or fields.
A lot of the red fire ant mounds can reach 16 plus inches in height as this depends on the type of soil and conditions that exist. Most of the time mounds may be found in or along rotting logs, around stumps and trees.
The red imported fire ant mounds have no openings in it like most other ant mounds. Red imported fire ants will leave and enter their through various underground tunnels
A fire ant colonies can also occur in or under all types of building structures and when the mounds are dirupted the workers will come running furiously out of the ground and sting the intruder(s) very aggressively.
Red imported fire ant can have huge colonies with 200-600,000 workers foraging at distances of 100 plus yards. The usual activity is from the spring time and on all the way through the fall.
While though the spring and summer months, the active mounds will send out winged swarmer ants ;whose primary purpose is to start up new colonies.
Most of the time Red imported fire ants will nest up inside during the cold winter months underneath bathtubs when installed on a slab or even next to a hot water heater. Southern fire ants normally nest in loose soil but at times they will be found in wood work or masonry. Their nests may be seen as very large crevices in the ground that spread out from 3-5 feet. Their nest can often be found under houses, boards, stones or in cracks in the concrete.
Colonies often will migrate from one site to another and the queen needs but only a few workers to start up a new colony. They can and often do develop a new mound several hundred feed away from their previous location overnight as they will work together as a strong team joining forces.
A flood will cause existing colonies to leave their mounds and they will float until they can reach land to establish a new mound. Colonies also can migrate to indoor locations as well. Fire ants are not anything to fool around with so if you have no experience with them then I would recommend calling in a professional.