You may think of ants as relatively harmless creatures, even though they are certainly annoying to see crawling around your property. But not all ants are mere foragers, some are harmful and can be quite dangerous. Learning how to keep all kinds of ants away from your property will help you avoid potentially dangerous ones, like fire ants.
What Are Fire Ants?
Unlike the nuisance species that you usually see wandering around out in your yard or crawling across your floors, fire ants have unique traits and behaviors. Here are some of the most notable differences between fire ants and other invasive ants:
- Color: Fire ants aren’t black or brown like other ants, but rather bright red. While some appear darker, you’ll still notice tell-tale bright patches of crimson that indicate a fire ant species.
- Size: Fire ants are tiny, even smaller than most other species of house ants. Their small size doesn’t mean they are less of a problem, though, much the opposite.
- Stinger: The main reason for their name isn’t their bright red color, but rather the burning venom that they deliver with their rear stingers.
Not Your Typical Ant Problem
While most people think that it’s a fire ant’s bite that causes such extraordinary pain, it’s their rear stingers that make them such dangerous pests. Fire ants have potent venom in their stingers. People can be allergic to this venom, just like some people are allergic to bee stings. Problem is, most people don’t know that they are allergic to fire ants, which is what makes the first encounter with them so potentially dangerous. Even for those without an allergy, a fire ant colony is bad news. These merciless bugs don’t take kindly to people walking around their territory, and they will quickly swarm to the source of a disturbance. A single sting is bad enough, imagine how painful a score of them would be.
Why They Are So Hard To Control
Aside from the physical harm they pose to people and pets, fire ants are also dangerous because they are much harder to control than other ant species. And no ant species is exactly easy to deal with. They all build their colonies below ground, with thousands of members of the population building tunnels, gathering food and materials, or defending the territory. The reproductive members of an ant colony, the queens, are hidden deep within these tunnel methods, so common baits and traps aren’t guaranteed to eliminate the specific ants you need to eliminate in order to stop the problem from coming back. With fire ants, this reality is even worse. Through a process called “budding,” the workers will specifically save a queen and transport her to another location. If the existing population survives, it can keep on producing ants, just like the rescued queen will once she settles into a new area. Simply put, one colony will turn into two.
Contact Bold Servicing Right Away
All of these reasons are why you shouldn’t wait to act on a fire ant problem on your property. Only professional solutions can truly get rid of a population, thoroughly and safely. Not only that, professional treatments can protect your yard from future infestations, making sure that problems don’t come right back. At Bold Servicing, we offer superior protection against fire ants in Tampa and many other kinds of harmful and tough-to-eliminate species. Contact us today to get started, even if you aren’t sure that you have an infestation already. It’s better to be safe than sorry, so trust Bold Servicing to shield your property today.