Diatomaceous Earth vs Huge Mound of Fire Ants | Useful Knowledge
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- čas přidán 15. 06. 2022
- Diatomaceous earth ants are destroyed easily and its natural. We show how easy diatomaceous earth ants are controlled naturally with no poisons. Many people ask if diatomaceous earth really works on fire ants. We provide quick and simple facts on the performance of diatomaceous earth against a huge north Alabama fire ant mound
We show you how easy it is to apply and the end results for a huge mound of fire ants. If you don't want to use poison or gasoline on fire ants in your vegetable garden, this video will inform you. Diatomaceous earth ants are naturally controlled in the garden so you don't have to worry about poisons around your vegetables. Please use strategically because it will also kill bees.
If you really want to know how to kill fire ants naturally and want proof that diatomaceous earth will get the job done, check out our fire ants study video.
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Man with the Knowledge: Jamie Hardy
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Creator: Mark Davies
Email: useful.knowledge.tv@gmail.com
Bama Country Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
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Diatomaceous earth ants will not live to keep a mound alive. - Jak na to + styl
The problem is that the queen is usually in the deepest parts of the nest. And if you don't kill her they'll just keep repopulating. But, I am way more for doing this over and over again for forever than using poison that could hurt other things. It has to hurt them to lose so many workers at once like that. But, the problem is the darn queen. She lays thousands of eggs a day. But, I really really like what you are doing not using chemicals.
DE does kill off a lot of workers initially. After that, DE basically starves the nest. Workers don’t feed the larvae because they won’t forage for food through the DE. Basically there is no next generation of workers because the larvae are not fed and the mound slowly dies. Also, the queen is not fed as the foragers refuse to do their job.
Mixing sugar with 10% borax granules will take care of that, the workers take it into the best and it’ll kill them from the inside.
Also if you mix de with food there is a possibility of them feeding the queen a bite of de.
😂🎉😂o🎉*😢🎉😂😂😮
You can make a bait of DE, corn meal or grits and sugar and it will kill whatever ants are left after the initial die off.
Awesome videos. You sure like saying "diatomaceous earth"!
Thanks 🤣😂
A good use for Diatomaceous earth if you have chickens is to put a bag of it in the area where they dust bath to keep them from getting mites
Hi. That’s is a great idea!
Great vid!
I use DE and borax traps.
For a borax trap, use a jar/old yogurt container, punch holes large enough for ants, and put in 1 tsp borax and 4 tsp sugar. Mix with water until you get a slurry about the consistency of honey. Check the "trap" now and then to make sure it's still moist (doesn't dry out). It's not really a trap - The ants take the blend back to the nest and feed others in the nest - including (potentially) the queen.
Hope this is of use.
Cheers!
Thanks for sharing. Any idea to kill a fire ant is ok in my book!!
Allow me to introduce you to my technique vs the most invasive ant species in the world. It's very simple, you make a poison trap and surround it with a mound of DE. I use old blue berry containers to house the poison as it's already got all the little slots for ants to enter from every direction. works pretty good. The ants like to collect their dead and bring them back to the nest, they end up bringing in the poison and DE to their own nests.
This does work! I tried DE after watching your previous video about trying it. It worked for me. I'm a north FL native and have lots and lots of the huge mounds in pasture and big yard... (hundreds? or just tens?) lol... Lots of acres of them. I haven't been around to all of them, but have made a big dent in the total number of active mounds. I was surprised because it has been a problem for years. I came back to watch first video again and found this one. I am sharing both vids with VW Family Farm, she has a big problem in her Arkansas garden. Thank you for sharing this great information! Love your Useful Knowledge!
Hi. Thanks for the kind comments. I love the stuff. I have a local a blueberry pick your own using it now. They didn’t want to poison the mounds around there bushes.
This is good to know. I have medium large front & back gardens in uk but have 30 really large mounds . They just keep multiplying and are quite solid. When we dig into them there are hundreds in each. So, I’ve bought some of this product & hoping it does the trick.feeling more confident now 😊
Instead of poison, I'll boil some water and pour it over the nest. It works great. It won't totally wipe out the nest but it'll cause enough damage that it'll naturally collapse on its own. You just have to be careful not to spill it on yourself while pouring.
I have used this process for decades. Had a pest control person from a pest control company tell me to use this method to kill the mound.
The boiling water slowly kills off enough workers that the mound starves.
Ants do not recognize water as a poison so they don't move to another spot.
No matter the size of the mound I pour 1 gallon of boiling water over mound each day until there's no more action in it.
reminds me of the people who pour molten metals in ant nests to get a casting lol
It could burn the fig roots
I do that, too, out away from our edible trees/plants. Closer to them I'm trying DE now. Beyond that, even just physically terrorizing the ant mounds every time you walk by them will eventually make them move. Even if they only move 15 feet away, it's getting them away from my edible plants and causing them the stress and wasted resources to slow down their ability to grow the mound and spread. Just taking a trowel or hand-shovel and flinging the top off the mound or mashing the nozzle on your garden hose into the mound and letting it rip for 5 minutes is enough to destroy their progress and make them re-think their location. So, when poison or boiling water is not an available option, you can still get them to pack up & move just by making their lives hell.
Thank you so much for this video. I had some make their way Into my home and I’ve made a homemade mixture of Castile soap and essential oils. It killed them immediately and also repelled more. Around other entry points I applied this powder and so far it’s worked and it’s only been about two days
. I just recently planted a blue berry bush sapling and I’ll definitely apply some diatomaceous earth around there for preventative care. I also always hear people saying it doesn’t work but from my own experience and as well as this video it proves it does. Thank you so much!!
Hi. Thanks! I love this stuff and use it on my tomatoes for aphids, corn for flea beetles, sorghum for sugarcane aphids, and of course fire ants. It works, sometimes it takes a little longer than straight poison but I love it.
This is just what I needed to see. We have a big mound by the porch near where the neighbor parks, and she has pets and probably wouldn’t appreciate the poison near them or her car.
I use it all the time! Matter of fact some Japanese Beetles are about to meet it tomorrow!
Nice fig tree. Hope it gives you some fruit. My grandma had a massive tree beside her house and it produced so much you could smell the sweetness in her whole backyard while also providing a lot of shade. One of my favorite "fruit" trees along with plums and peaches.
Thanks for sharing! My grandma had a huge tree as well. She made tons of fig preserves! Honestly, if I had to give up all of my jellies and jams and just keep one thing for biscuits, it would be fig preserves.
Thank you for the tip!
Is the DE actually killing the ant colonies or are they just relocating? I find that when I try natural ways to rid ants from my garden beds they actually form a colony elsewhere in my yard :(
The idea is that the DE is like shards of glass due to its size and the ants are getting cuts on their exoskeleton and then they dehydrate and die. should work on anything that has an exoskeleton like roaches and beetles, ect.
Growing up deep in the country here in northeast Mississippi , my sister fell face first into a huge mound! She was TWO YEARS OLD! It could have killed her. Yes, we were allowed to roam our entire homestead. But that was over 60 years ago. I guess one of the reasons I fight fireants with everything I can. Yes, poison in some places. But I will definitely give DE a try in other places. Great video. You have a new subscriber, my Alabama neighbor!
Sat on an ant hill when i was 6. Have had a personal vendetta with them ever since..
@Sm31LyxTr33s Something similar happened to me when I was about 3. I don’t remember it but I’m told I was in the hospital to recover.
I know you said 60 years ago, but poor baby! 😢 my nephew is that age now. I just couldn’t imagine.
I've never had any luck controlling ants with diatomaceous earth. I've peppered the same colonies repeatedly and they just keep doing their thing. Sugar water with a splash of borax does the trick.
Man thanks for the awesome video. Going to apply some now in my raised garden beds that are full of ants.
Hi. Thanks! It will definitely work on the ants. I use it for ants and several different types of aphids in my garden.
A year ago, I was openning my living room window to clean the outter seal near the screen and spotted a pile of big black ants, I poured boric acid directly on the pile and shut the window (all dead),never used D E. I might get the Food Grade DE and pour it all along my foundation on a hot week!
Why on the black ants? Here, the black ants aren't aggressive. I pick them up and no bites. If I can get enough fire ants out of the way for the black ants to compete, I'd be thrilled. Ants aerate the soil.
@cra2cra226 well they weren't aerating no soil in my window seal, they were trying to get in my house so I boroxed them!!!
Food grade diatomaceous earth works for insect problems!
very satisfying
I love diatomaceous earth for cracks indoors. Once had a ton of ants coming in from cracks near fireplace and after filling them in with diatomaceous earth they stopped coming.
Awesome!! Thanks for sharing!
very informative and helpful. thank you sir!
Thanks!!
Have you tried Boric acid? I think its more effective than DE.
Thanks for posting these videos, love your channel and the values you're promoting.
I'm wondering if I could use DE on a European wasp nest in my front yard... It's winter and they're still active; I was hoping they'd have died off by now but nope, they recognise me and my lawnmower- I've decided to leave a patch of grass growing wild because getting swarmed ain't worth the aesthetic of a nice clean lawn, but I do wonder if dumping a bag of diatomaceous earth on their den might be a good, non-poisonous solution?
I think you could kill them with DE. I had a bee nest the was in the ground on our property. It was in one of those locations that people were going to get stung. I put DE all around so that when they emerged and landed, they had to walk through it. It killed that nest.
@@useful.knowledge Awesome, thanks mate! I'll follow your lead and apply some DE over a couple of weeks when it's dry. I'll leave a comment on a future video and let you know how it turns out!
@@useful.knowledge If it were bees call the government and they'll most likely remove them for you free of charge. They don't want them killed but will relocate them instead. We need the bees, just not close and stinging us but pollenating plants.
Cause dehydration?
I have found 2 kinds of DE on amazon, food grade and another, which one did you use if you can say?? THANKS!
Hey if you are in Georgia, go to your local co-op and ask for the Red Lake DE. It has some Calcium Bentonite in it but that’s ok. It’s considered food grade for farm animals. Tractor Supply also has it and it’s a lot cheaper in the 40lb bag. This is what we use.
Thank you!! Its on my list!!
wow. those are some tenacious ants. I've taken 95% of them down with a lighter dusting. I dust it out of a hole in the bag, about 3 times a year on every mound.
Awesome info! Thanks!
Thanks! I see my problem is I don't use enough DE and I need to reapply till the mound is dead. This is very helpful. We're plaqued with fireants! I can't use poison because we have free-range chickens.
Thanks! I use DE all over my property. I even use it for sugar cane aphids. No need for poison.
@@useful.knowledge can I throw it on my plants? Will it harm them?
Absolutely, you can throw it on your plants. I do it all the time. I absolutely use no poison on my garden at all. When the aphids attack my tomato plants, I throw it from the ground up so it will get under the leaves where the aphids live.
Glad you're looking for more eco-friendly options than big-box store poisons. That said a) how much of a bag (and what cost per bag) do you think this mound needed? b) I've gotten mounds to move just by disturbing them alot. Like you did - tearing up the mound, or sticking a nozzle in the mound for 10 minutes. Do that repeatedly as you did, and they realize it's a hostile spot and they move. Maybe 10 ft away, maybe 50 ft away. But they weren't "killed" - just relocated. That's still a bonus if you get them out of the areas you walk around in. Plus, it's still keeping their population in check because they can't spend resources on foraging and reproducing if they're busy moving all the time. But my point is that I'd like to see you pester a mound withOUT DE as much as you pestered this one and see if they don't move in 15 days, too. (without the expense of DE) Would be a neat science experiment. In fact, the county extension office and the dept of agriculture actually DOES such scientific experiments, controlling for variables and counting up the # of mounds in a given field when they try different control measures. I'mma go look at their site again because that will tell you what is myth and what is actually safely removing the most mounds per acre.
Hi. These ant didn’t move the mound. They just won’t forage for food and the mound dies. I have tried something like what you are thinking about. I’ve ran my mower over some mounds which blew the top off and sent ants everywhere. I then let many more really angry ants come up to the top of the mound and drove back over it sending thousands more out into the yard. Basically it took a major portion of the worker ants away from the mounds and it did stunt them or even some did die.
Thank you!!!!!!!!!!!!
we use the D Earth for medicinal purposes.
Thanks Jamie. So far, no Fire Ants in central Kentucky. But I use D.E. on out garden for slugs. HAPPY FATHER'S DAY. God Bless and stay safe.
Great idea on the slugs. Thanks and Happy Fathers Day! My wife and I were up at the Red River Gorge during the Memorial Day weekend. It was beautiful up there in Kentucky. God Bless!
@@useful.knowledge Wonderful. Thing about the Gorge is, if you don't care where you are, you're never lost. LOL
Diatomaceous Earth hasn't worked for me. Kills the ants that are on the surface. Sugar and Borax seems to be working.
I heard you should use food grade DE. Was that what you used?
Hi. Yes, it’s food grade for farm animals. This honestly works so well for me that I haven’t tried boric acid.
Only thing I have found to kill Coastal brown ants etc is AMDRO, will try DE next as AMDRO is expensive
Thank you for the information!! ps Take care of those Fig trees and they'll take care of you!
Definitely!!
excellent, another good video!
Hi there! Good to hear from again!
@@useful.knowledge I check your channel for new videos all the time..glad to see a new one.. cheers
thanks. good video
Thanks!
Beautiful figs trees
Thanks!
Is it safe if I put it on top of a citrus roots?
Hi. I have never had it hurt any of my plants. I have it all around my sugar cane right now.
I've been wanting to try this but I hears it wasn't good for the bees...any thoughts on that....thank you and God bless. Love your videos ♥️👍♥️👍
Hi. I use it in my garden early when the plants are just starting to grow. It’s great for tomato aphids and flea beetles on corn. I do get concerned about the bees when the blooms start. It may kill a few bees but it’s only going to be the ones coming in contact with it on the plant. My thinking is that it’s not like I’m placing it all over the entrance to the bee hive. I also feel like it’s safer than any poison or insecticide that may get back to the hive. Many times after the rains wash the DE away, I won’t reapply unless the aphids come back.
The bees aren't going to dip down onto an ant mound, are they?
No, they leave the fire ants alone. The only thing that loves fire ants around here is armadillos. They will did a hole deep into the mound and kill the mound.
It appears nothing works toward the eradication of fire ants. I dealt with these horrific insects for years before deciding to sell my house and property and move out of the country. I hated to leave but the fire ants won all the battles and ultimately they won the war. I am despaired and emotionally wrecked to this day.
They are definitely resilient. The summer and the year after that I did the fire ant study was two years of very low numbers around the homestead. They are back because when they do their mating flights, they can travel several miles.
Is this "food grade" DE or bedbug type?
Hi. It’s food grade for farm animals and pets.
Hey Mark I got a kick out of your comment about Jerry Mitchalc . He's most likely a better Marksman than all of us .A World Champion to say the least . LOL
Hummm, I assume this comment was on the wrong video... 😉
Thanks for all the great info and showing all of the follow up. I have a question...so if it rains, do I reapply the same day, or do I have to wait for the grass to dry out? I have two mounds of ants that have survived Ortho max, over n out and amdro...I call those products fire ant relocators 😁. I have a puppy and I need these mounds GONE!
Hi. I will usually wait til the next day or whenever it drys out good. Dew doesn’t hurt it but rain definitely does.
@@useful.knowledge thank you! I'm in South Carolina and it's been raining almost every day lately, so I went ahead and put some diatomaceous earth on the hills now. I'll reapply in a day or two whether it rains or not
I understand that! Sounds like a good plan.
@@patriciaflaherty Another SCer here. We must have the worst state for fire ants. They are all over our yard and are now getting into our house. Loving all these natural/environmentally friendly solutions. I'm using dish soap myself.
My homemade bug (fly, gnat, fruit fly, etc) zapper is a spray bottle with a vinegar, dish soap and essential oil mix.
My goodness! Why have I never thought to try this before when I know all the awesomeness that is DE??? I suppose it’s because I’ve always considered fire ants to be some kind of supernatural spawn of Satan not subject to anything short of some nuclear scorched earth chemical. Even then...
Hope has dawned in my little Mississippi garden! Cheers!
Hey. I’m originally from Philadelphia, MS and live in north Alabama now. I use DE in my garden on the tomatoes for aphids and on the corn for flea beetles. I spread it with a duster all over my garden for fire ants in the spring. I’m like you….I think they are the spawn of Satan.
I hate them with a purple pea vine passion 🔥🐜
6:00 you can see a couple ants crawling on the bottom left corner of the video lol. I'm going to try using some DE though. These fire ants are terrorizing my home.
Well it is Alabama 🤣. They come from everywhere! I like not putting poison out around my garden and fruit trees. It works but it’s not a die immediately thing. You’ll like it.
@@useful.knowledge I hope so. I can not ship food grade DE here, so I'll have to go with whatever we have in our hardware stores. Thanks for the showing!
did it kill them or did they just move someplace else though? i guess either way they are gone from that spot .
Hi. DE kills the mound. They don’t move. This is my go to for any insects. I absolutely do not use any chemicals on my garden.
I always use organic methods when possible
What is the significance of no rainfall? I heard you say, "it's not going to rain" 3 times without any context. Is that good or bad? How does rain or no rain change the effectiveness?
Several years ago when I was first starting to use DE a guy at the CO-OP told me to re-apply after a rain. I went with that on fire mounds and it’s been successful. It gives them more time to walk around and get more on their bodies or refuse to walk on it. With that said, I have noticed that when I put it on corn or sorghum that I seems to stay on even after a rain.
It's my understanding that Alabama is the 🐜 capitol of the world 🤣
I would say that it’s definitely in the top 5.
More useful knowledge 🙂
Thanks!!
Which diatomaceous earth did you buy?
Hi. It’s the Red Lake Diatomaceous earth at Tractor Supply or most Farmers CO-OPs have it. The 40lb bag is usually less that $30
👍
You can form a perimeter around your fig trees with a mobile chicken fence and use chickens to eat up all the ants. In fact you could place a temporary chicken coop within the perimeter for the chickens to roost at night and let the birds go to town on the ants over and over. . The chickens get a healthy natural feed during this time so you don't have to spend a dime on feed and as a bonus, your fig trees get a natural fertilizer boost from the chicken droppings. You get great tasting eggs and chicken meat plus a bumper crop of figs. Super win-win. Just be sure to use adult chickes and not chicks.
Hi. That’s a great idea but my chickens will not eat fire ants. I see them all in their chicken tractor and the chickens won’t touch them. Even if the ants are eating on a biscuit that I threw in there, the birds will basically pick around until the ants drop off. They must somehow realize that they are not tasty. I honestly thought they eat them as well.
They won't eat them. Maybe they'll kill some for fun but they won't eat them.
Can confirm this stuff is amazing with ants. We occasionally get some kind of species that is really resistant to poison, just will not stop coming.
We were so thrilled when they left almost immediately after sprinkling a little around the molding of our kitchen counter (we also gob a bit of vaseline at the entry points if we can identify them)
Works like magic, no poison needed.
I find them occasionally helpful if you can tolerate the bites actually. The formic acid in their venom is a great anti inflammatory. Got arthritis or a aching back? Get a few bites on the affected areas, boil up the treatment and wait for it to cool. By the time it cools you've had the venom active in your skin long enough to benefit from it. Apply the poultice for about twenty minutes and you're good to go. Arthritis takes a break for a few weeks.
Very interesting. I know folks do this with bees but I haven’t thought about ants. They are such a bad nuisance in the southeastern US.
@@useful.knowledge Agreed. It can also be done with the stinging nettle plant. Very similar content of formic acid. I don't know if formic acid is in a bee's venom but I've also heard that about their stings as well.
@@useful.knowledge You ain't lying! We moved to Florida last summer (from Kentucky) and my poor feet look like I keep getting a blast from a weak shotgun.
True! I grew up in south Alabama about 20 miles from the FL line. They will sting the crap out of you!
@@useful.knowledge Yup. They swarm as badly and quickly as bees or yellow jackets.
Use a damn shovel not a stick if you want to get their nest
I’ll use whatever I want.
😮
Works well but take care not to get it into the lungs, it kills also bees and other helpfull insects.
you killed a lot of ants but the queen(s) were moved to another location. we call this "budding" in the insect world. you actually did not kill the colony with DE. it is a great option to deter ants around edible plants.
That is certainly not my experience. I have several videos using DE in fire ants mounds. A few folks make a comment about the mound moving but if you use DE like I show, the mound dies. When I did the study video a few years ago, I killed close to 40 mounds. My place still has very few mounds after killing that many. Check out the latest video where I killed a mound in my sugar cane and I even walk all around to answer the question.
I love the sound of a real man and not snowflakes. Lol
🤣. Thanks!
What does that earth do to the ants?
It cuts them, damages their exoskeleton.
Basically it’s like walking over huge shards of metal and glass. It cuts up their exoskeleton causing them to dehydrate. They will not walk on it if the have a choice and simply will not forage for food.
@@useful.knowledge gotcha
😂
under the bricks
No, they died. All of them. Check out the ant study video. Over 90% of the mounds died.
Diatomaceous earth is only a temporary solution, they will be back after a couple of rains. It doesn't actually kill them, it just irritates the crap out of them and they dig deeper and wider next time.
Your statement is incorrect. They don’t come back. Other mounds may show up in your yard but not from the same mound. If you apply it correctly, it works.
false, DE cuts them to pieces and pulls all the moisture out of their body, dehydrating them..been using it 40 years
@@TANTRUMGASM All I can say that the ants around here just push the contaminated soil aside or move the next exits over a foot and continue on.
Why kill them at all?
Because they painfully sting. Especially young children that may fall into a mound. The sting is painful and basically creates a pustule. A mound can contain 1000’s. In the southeastern US, they are everywhere. You can’t let you guard down or you’ll get several stings especially when living in the country. I got stung by several the other day because they were foraging in my bbq grill. I went in to clean it out and got stung.
I'm going to assume you have never been stung by ants, or accidentially stepped in an ant bed as a child. Once they get a hold of you your view will change.
Well, we could transport them all to your yard.
@@Fermion. having a bad life?
@@kamikazitsunami Not at all. Just bought a new home, actually. Hence, I'm here looking up tips for the summer.
I was just making a joke at your expense.