dpb wrote:
Chief Two Eagles wrote:
On Tue, 22 Jun 2010 08:38:15 -0500, Wilfred Xavier Pickles wrote:

The state of Missouri (US) belongs to the red ants in the summertime.
They are everywhere.

They congregate around my back door or get into the detached garage, it
bothers me. In the lawn I don't much mind.

I've been using Diazenon powder to control 'em. It kills many but
doesn't repel 'em. They keep coming back.

Anything on the market that effectively repels red ants but won't cause
serious problems for pets, etc?

How about a pet anteater?

Chuckle...

For OP, I find the Amdro (or is it "n"; I can _never_ remember) ant
killer effective in the "don't need applicator license" aisle.

Diazinon is no longer available at all in the US afaik and hasn't been
for several years (pushing 10 now???).

The Amdro bait is pretty effective at actually being carried into the
hills and eliminating colonies which is the key to control in areas. It
also does deter them from areas in which there is some scattered it
seems--I notice on sidewalks particularly if there's a den started in a
crack they'll continue to congregate at the entrance until they're done
in but they avoid the former trail areas it's scattered around like the
plague. But, they're conditioned to clean the debris from around the
den and the workers will carry it out and around and in a day or so a
small den will almost always be eliminated completely. Sometimes a
really large den may come back to small activity in a week or so, but a
second application will then get the newcomers. Speaking of which, I
noted while mowing around the equipment lot yesterday a couple big 'uns
I need to go get...

--


--
We began using Amdro when my husband was the handyman for our
condo...lots of outdoor work and loads of fire ants. Amdro sprinkled
lightly along paved areas (patios, pavers, sidewalk, seawall, etc) would
eliminate them for about a year. At least to the extent we didn't get
swarmed when we worked on sprinklers. It's pretty interesting to watch
them try the bait and then tell their friends ) Should be applied
when a couple of days of dry weather is expected and gently so as not to
disturb the nest. I've never tried it for other varieties of ants. The
label directs that it should be broadcast on an entire lawn, but that
was never necessary for us.