Unnecessary trauma: Fire ants in nursing homes

Nursing home patient with with fire ant stings.
(Laquna Ross)

This week Vietnam veteran Joel Marrable died at a Georgia VA Hospital following a vicious attack by fire ants.

According to his daughter, Mr. Marrable was found by staff last week covered with ants. Even worse, family wasn't notified by the hospital after the attack. His daughter learned of the incident only after inquiring about the red bumps on her father's body. Although Mr. Marrable's death has not been directly blamed on fire ants, the incident was traumatizing to all involved.

This story would be more shocking to me, except I have been involved in at least two lawsuits where fire ants attacked patients unable to respond or call for help. And despite the fact that stinging cases are often hushed up, many other incidents occur every year.

It doesn't have to be this way. Fire ants are highly manageable given our scientific understanding of fire ants, and today's pesticide tools. But fire ant management always requires attention to detail. It also requires cooperation and communication between the health care facility and its pest control provider. 

If your company provides pest control for health care facilities, here are some essential elements needed to keep your customer (and you) out of the headlines.

• Ensure the facility has a policy regarding indoor ants. The plan should include clear staff instructions on how to immediately report signs of ants to your company. 
• Be sure your staff is always updated on what wings/rooms house high-risk patients.
• Require patients to be immediately removed from any room with ants to another ant-free location. In this Georgia incident, the patient was returned to his original room only to have fire ants return and attack again a second day. No patient should be returned to an infested room until the indoor and outdoor areas around the room have been inspected, treated and cleared by a pest control professional.  
• Clean infested rooms with a soap solution and disinfect before allowing any patient to return.  Holes and suspected ant entry points should be either sealed or treated. Cleaning with soap removes traces of trail pheromone that might lure other ants back into the room.
• Conduct periodic staff training classes to let nurses and other caregivers know how to identify fire ants. In this week's incident it is telling that none of the staff interviewed referred to the ants as fire ants, only "ants."  Fire ants pose perhaps the greatest immediate health threat to aphasic patients, and should not be difficult to recognize with training. 
• Inspect outdoor areas regularly for fire ants, and train maintenance staff to recognize and report evidence of fire ant nesting around the facility. 
• Fire ant infestations inside a building can almost always be traced back to a fire ant mound or colony outdoors. It's important to know who is responsible for grounds treatment ahead of time. When one contractor is assigned duty for indoor pest control and another for outdoor pest control, blame-shifting is inevitable. The losers in this game are the patients. Ideally, one contractor should be responsible for both indoor and outdoor fire ant control, so there is no confusion.  
• Don't rely solely on mound treatments for fire ant control. Broadcast applications of either baits or residual insecticides are always a better option. Fire ant baits are ideal for large turf areas and are typically applied once or twice a year. Residual granular insecticides containing fipronil or bifenthrin can be used annually in landscape areas immediately adjacent to buildings.  The idea is to keep fire ant mounds as far away from the building as possible. Fire ant control should start at the property line, not the final two feet to the building.  
• Don't allow unlicensed applicators to apply insecticides for fire ants. In Texas, pest control at health care facilities must be performed by a licensed pest control technician or certified applicator. This includes control of ants and other insects, pest birds, plant diseases, rodents, and weeds.
• Document everything you do in writing on your service report. Document both pesticide and non-pesticide-related actions taken during the visit. Be specific about what pests are found during inspections. Remember, there is no such thing as just an "ant."  Fire ants should be clearly identified. Assume that any of your service tickets could be examined by a lawyer some day. 

If doing pest control around nursing home facilities sounds risky, it is. But a conscientious company can succeed at this business. And a nursing home can be one of the most rewarding accounts you have.  As a friend and colleague points out, the biggest risks happen with "low-bid contractors who are not willing to address underlying problems."  

Mr. Marrable's daughter told the Washington Post that her father "deserved better" than the treatment he received in his last days. Let's make sure all our sensitive accounts, like nursing homes, get the good service they deserve.

For more information about fire ant control in nursing homes, see Extension factsheet ENTO-022.

Controlling fire ants in gardens

Fire ant carrying bait back to the nest.  Baits do not have to be
applied directly to a garden to control fire ants living inside a
vegetable garden.  USDA image courtesy Bugwood.

One of the common questions about fire ants concerns control within vegetable gardens. This is an especially common question directed to licensed applicators who work for school districts with school gardens.  It also may be an issue for PMPs servicing residential accounts with home gardens.

A standard, low-risk treatment on commercial, residential and school properties is use of a fire ant bait; however many of the most commonly used baits do not allow direct use in vegetable gardens. Fortunately, there is a work-around.

In most cases the simplest way to get fire ants out of a small- to medium-sized garden is to apply a fast acting fire ant bait around the outside garden perimeter.  This should be a legal application for all fire ant baits (check your label to be sure), and since fire ants do not pay much attention to garden edges, the garden infesting ants will readily pick up bait from the surrounding ground.  Yes the bait does end up inside the garden anyway, but only inside the fire ant nests, where there is no risk of it contaminating leafy vegetables.

For larger gardens or cropland where perimeter treatments might be less effective, several fire ant baits are legal for use.  Spinosad and abamectin-containing baits generally allow garden application (e.g., Clinch®, Fertilome® Come and Get It, and Payback®).  In addition, Extinguish® (but not Extinguish® Plus) fire ant bait containing methoprene has a label that allows use on cropland. However Extinguish is too slow for most gardeners, requiring approximately two months for maximum control.

In addition to baits, mounds can be treated directly with any of several mound drenches labeled for use in gardens.  The eXtension website contains recommendations for a two-step (bait and mound treatment) approach to fire ant control in both conventional and organic vegetable gardens.

Appreciation to Dr. Paul Nester (Texas A&M AgriLife) for supplying some of the information used in this post.

Resources for fire ant control

Because fire ants have been such an economically important pest in this country, it's not surprising that a lot of research and extension resources have been developed to help manage these insects. In light of last month's tragic fire ant death, I thought it might be of interest to survey some of the different research-based information resources that are out there.

One of the best places to go for fire ant management information is eXtension.org's (pronounced EE-extension) fire ant management page.  Most states with fire ant experts now contribute to the resources on this site, making it a one-stop source for fire ant fighters.  If you prefer video training to lots of reading, eXtension has recorded webinars presented by fire ant experts from all over the country.  Subjects include fire ant control made easy, how to kill fire ants in sensitive locations, evaluations of different home remedies for fire ants, and protecting loved ones from fire ants.

In addition, the website serves as a collecting point for research proceedings from all the Annual Imported Fire Ant Conferences since 1984.  While this information is certainly for the dedicated reader, it's very interesting to see the original research on which most of today's fire ant control recommendations are based.

For many years one of the premier sites for fire ant control information has been the Texas A&M fire ant website. This site was developed largely under the leadership of now retired extension entomologist, Dr. Bart Drees, and has more information about fire ants than you ever thought to ask.

This site has been a repository for information from Texas' Red Imported Fire Ant Management Program, and has progress reports from this project dating back to 1998 as well as result demonstration reports from Extension researchers since 1986.  There is information about fire ant control for specific sites like organic gardens, homes and buildings, compost piles and health care facilities.

One of the most useful and comprehensive guides to fire ant control is the multistate publication on Managing Imported Fire Ants in Urban Areas.  Or if you like it simple, one of the most popular Extension publications ever is the Texas Two Step Method: Do-it-Yourself Fire Ant Control.  Need an hour of verified training for one of your technicians who needs to know about fire ant control?  Check out the Fire Ant Control Made Easy video series. Or have them sit down and learn all they need to know about fire ant baits--one of the most useful and cost-effective tactics for fire ant management--from the AgriLife Bookstore. And school districts needing to polish up their fire ant management plans might want to check out the Action Plan for Fire Ants.

Maybe you have your own favorite online fire ant control resource.  If so, tell us about it with the comment feature on this page.  There's really no excuse for not knowing a lot about fire ants with all the information out there.

When it comes to fire ants, pay attention to detail

Because they are so common throughout the South, fire ant
risks are often underestimated.
Copyrighted photo courtesy Alex Wild.

In case you missed it, last month a 13-year old middle school student died  as a result of fire ant stings he suffered during half-time on a Corpus Christi, Texas football field.  The student, Cameron Espinosa, was on the sidelines when he complained of difficulty breathing after receiving fire ant stings on the field.  He collapsed and died several days later from complications due to an apparent anaphylactic reaction to fire ant venom.

The incident reminds me of how important good pest control is to everyone's health and well-being. It also gets me thinking about all the things necessary to doing a good job when it comes to fire ants.

I know this school district considered fire ant control important and took steps to control them, but a lot of factors go into controlling fire ants effectively on a football field, or in any sensitive site.  So I thought I would share some things that come to mind when I think about good fire ant control:

• Know your fire ant insecticides.  Fire ant control insecticides include slow-acting baits (IGRs), faster-acting baits (spinosad, indoxacarb, hydramethylnon), slow-acting residual granulars (fipronil), faster-acting residual granulars (bifenthrin).  You also have a wide variety of products for mound treatments, most requiring water for activation. Each of these products has advantages and disadvantages.  Do you know them? If not, check with your state extension entomologist or a knowledgeable pesticide distributor.
• Plan ahead.  Baits are less costly than most other treatments and fit in well with goal of using safer materials, especially at a school district.  But baits are slow, most requiring 1-2 months for peak control. Even non-bait, residual granular insecticides require time for control.  The popular Top Choice® granular insecticide (fipronil), requires 1-2 months to eliminate fire ant mounds in the treatment zone. These products are not designed to give good control two days before the first Friday night football game.
• Know when and how to inspect a field for fire ants.  Fire ants are present in fields all year round, but they are most visible during cool weather, or just after a rain or heavy irrigation.  Inspecting the field at the wrong time could lead to a false sense of security regarding fire ant activity.  In some cases, especially during hot, dry weather, use of hot dog slices (possibly at night) can be the best way to measure fire ant activity.  Also, in the case of athletic fields it's a good idea to do a final inspection just before a game or practice. Fire ant mounds can appear within just a few hours, especially after a rain.
• Know how to apply insecticides accurately.  Fire ant baits require specialized equipment designed to put product out at very low rates (generally 1- 1.5 lbs/acre). For large areas a Herd GT-77 spreader is a standard application tool.  Spyker rotary spreaders, or handheld seed spreaders are good for smaller areas. All spreaders should be carefully calibrated to make sure the correct amount is going over the field.  Too much bait and you will overspend on product, too little and you might not get the desired control.  The same is even more true for the more expensive granular residual products.
• Know when to apply.  Fire ant baits are most effective if applied when ants are actively foraging. When soil temperatures are above 95 degrees F, fire ants stop foraging and retreat deep in the soil.  Baits applied during midday will degrade and lose their attraction before the ants return to the surface at night, when temperatures have dropped.  This means that in the heat of summer fire ant baits should be applied later in the day, just before evening.  Baits are also not effective during the cooler season, so baits applied between October and April, say, may not give you satisfactory control.
• With baits it's also important to know the age of the product.  Fire ant baits don't have an especially long shelf life. So buying fire ant bait when its on sale late in the season for the following year may not be the bargain you think it is.  Buy your bait just before you need it, and only as much as you need.  Saving bait, especially opened containers, from one season to the next, is not recommended. If you are unsure of the quality of a bait, find an active nest and sprinkle some around the base of the mound.  If the bait is fresh the ants should quickly (within 5-15 minutes) pick it up and carry it underground.  
• Don't rely on just treating mounds to manage fire ant problems.  Mound treatments can effectively kill fire ant colonies, but they do a terrible job of managing fire ant populations in an account.  That's because it is so difficult to find and treat fire ant mounds. A new fire ant colony may take 6 months to even produce a visible mound.  Broadcast residual treatments or broadcast applications of baits are much more effective because they treat all mounds, visible and invisible.  And they are generally less expensive than mound treatments.
• Water, water, water. Water is a necessary part of treating individual mounds.  Without it you cannot effectively reach the lower parts of a fire ant nest.  One to two gallons of mixed insecticide, or 1-2 gallons of water to wash in a granular application, are mandatory for good control.  And don't expect immediate control with all mound treatments.  Aerosols and liquid drenches are fastest, but allow at least an hour with these treatments to ensure that ants in a nest are neutralized.

These are just a few of the details necessary to ensure that you've done the best you can to keep your accounts mostly fire ant free.  And remember that schools with athletic fields aren't the only sensitive sites. Playgrounds, nursing homes and other medical facilities, parks, event grounds servicing thousands of concert goers--all are places where fire ant control needs to be done right.

If you're a PMP servicing a school or park or a residential lawn, you can't do this all on your own. Communicate and enlist the help of your customers: coaches, park maintenance staff, or homeowners. Let them know about how to report problems and to know what to do in case of need for an emergency treatment.  And let your customer know about the importance of taking stings--any arthropod sting--seriously.  Anyone who experiences difficulty breathing, tightness in chest or throat, hives or rashes after a sting should seek medical assistance immediately.  

Fire ants, like all pests, are an inevitable part of life in Texas.  But that doesn't mean we have to live with them. 

Treating fire ants in electrical equipment

Fire ants and other ants are attracted to the warmth and electrical fields associated with outdoor electrical equipment.  This electrical insulation has been chewed and wires bared by fire ants.

Although I blogged about fire ants and electrical equipment over a year ago, it's a subject that deserves repeated attention, especially during these hottest days of the year.  This is the time of year when damage to electrical equipment, and especially air conditioners, is especially troublesome.  One of the less recognized economic impacts of fire ants is the damage they can do to air conditioners, traffic signal controllers, landscape lighting, well pumps, and pad-mounted transformer boxes.  Such damage costs Texans millions of dollars every year. 

One of the oft-forgotten benefits of having a professional service controlling fire ant is the protection of such sensitive equipment.  By providing fire ant control in lawns and landscapes, PMPs provide an important first line of defense for electrical equipment. And control of ants in the equipment itself is a useful, and sometimes critical, second line of defense.  Fortunately, there effective products for this second approach.

Pad-mounted electrical transformers (box in foreground) are
common in residential areas throughout Texas and the
southern states.

Many years ago I was approached by a north Texas utility company to evaluate different products for keeping fire ants out of electrical transformer boxes, you know those ubiquitous green boxes found throughout residential neighborhoods in Texas.  The utility company rarely services these boxes, but when they do they wanted to be able to treat a box quickly and cheaply with a product that would keep fire ants out for a long time (years). 

Unfortunately, we're still looking for the perfect product or long-term treatment for fire ant control in electrical equipment.  But this doesn't mean that there aren't some helpful products out there.  In my research, we found that granular formulations of bifenthrin, tefluthrin and even chlorpyrifos would keep fire ants out of electrical equipment for a year or more. Depending on the label directions of specific products, you should be able to apply a light layer of these insecticides into the base of many types of electrical equipment to suppress fire ant activity for at least a year.

More recently, Molly Keck, our extension IPM program specialist in San Antonio, looked at an additional, novel treatment to keep fire ants out of transformers. In her study, she evaluated an easy-to-apply permethrin-impregnated plastic tape strip that could be placed around the concrete openings inside these (locked) transformer boxes, and found that they worked well to exclude fire ants for 16 months.  These tests, I can attest, are difficult to set up and conduct; but despite their relatively small sample sizes, these products do work.

Keck and extension entomologist Bart Drees also published a fact sheet on the subject of different methods to exclude fire ants from electrical equipment. In it they mention a variety of different products and list manufacturers of these materials if you want to obtain samples for your own use or testing. 

I encourage you to be aware of the different fire ant control options for protecting electrical equipment.  I suspect that this is a service that few of you are offering right now; but it seems to me that treatment of electrical equipment would be a great way to distinguish yourselves from your competition while saving your customers significant money.  It may also save you a customer. 

If you want to bring out the revolutionary fiery spirit of a Texan, let the air conditioner break down in hundred-degree weather due to fire ants.  And I for one wouldn't want to be in that line of fire.

Club soda for your ants, Sir?

One of the constants in the pest control business is the endless stream of supposedly sure-fire cures for this or that pest problem. Placing crushed mint leaves around the house to keep ants out of the home is one that will make your house smell nice, but won't do a lot to discourage ants. Another favorite old-time cure is putting hedge apples (fruits of the osage orange, Maclura pomifera) around the home to discourage cockroaches. Although some recent research suggests that a component in hedge apples may have insect repelling properties (most plants produce secondary plant compound that serve as insecticides or fungicides), it is highly unlikely that any aromatic plant oil could be dispersed throughout a home in high enough concentration to kill or repel a pest like a cockroach or household ant.

A recent email making its way around cyberspace concerns use of club soda to control fire ants. It runs something like this:

"An environmentally friendly cure for fire ants has been announced by Walter Reeves on his Georgia Gardener radio program. Testimonials that it REALLY WORKS are coming in.

"Simply pour two cups of CLUB SODA (carbonated water) directly in the center of a fire ant mound. The carbon dioxide in the water is heavier than air and displaces the oxygen which suffocates the queen and the other ants. The whole colony will be dead within about two days.

"Besides eliminating the ants, club soda leaves no poisonous residue, does not contaminate the ground water, and does not indiscriminately kill other insects. It is not harmful to your pets, soaks into the ground. Each mound must be treated individually and a one liter bottle of club soda will kill 2 to 3 mounds."

First of all, the Internet watchdog site Snopes.com reports contacting the horticulture specialist Walter Reeves, who denies ever recommending club soda for fire ant control. He did ask listeners to let him know whether they had any success with the treatment, and so far the consensus appears to be negative. To date there is no published research that supports the effectiveness of club soda, nor does the concept seem likely to work given the size of the average fire ant colony gallery and the amount of CO2 that would have to be injected into the ground to saturate a nest with this admittedly toxic gas.

The fire ant section of the e-Xtension website is an excellent resource for all things fire ant. This site also takes the position that this method has not been demonstrated to be effective.

On top of this, one of our own Texas Extension entomologists, Wizzie Brown (whose blog is listed here), tested club soda in a replicated study this summer and got no control. "It's impressive though, when you pour it onto a mound," she told me this morning. Lots of fizzing! Unfortunately the fire ants were not overly impressed.

Being from Austin, TX (whose citizens have proudly adopted the slogan "Keep Austin Weird"), Wizzie is uniquely qualified to test these more unusual remedies. In recent studies she also tested wet and dry molasses (no control) and aspartame (no control) for fire ant control. She takes pride in the fact that her research is also cited in the current Snopes.com article debunking aspartame as an ant poison.

It's important to realize that commercial insecticides are usually the best way to go after serious pests like fire ants or German cockroaches or biting mosquitoes. Fire ant baits remain the most effective, inexpensive and low risk way to control fire ants in backyard- to city park-sized infested areas. Individual mound treatments, no matter how effective, will never provide as good area-wide control of fire ants as an effective broadcast treatment.

There may be some effective home remedies out there, but commercial insecticides are almost always more effective, and often cheaper to use than that "sure-fire", REALLY WORKS, 100% SAFE remedy you hear about on a mommy blog or over the radio waves. Add to that your expertise as a pest management professional, and you should never get too concerned about losing your job to a hedge apple.

Fire ants shock homeowners

An incident last month in Carrollton, TX highlights the need for consistent fire ant control, the sort of service residential pest control companies excel at. In this case fire ants invaded a transformer box in a residential area, resulting in a power surge that cost nine surrounding households thousands of dollars. The resulting surge damaged sensitive electronics including garage door openers, dishwashers and microwaves.

Fire ants pose problems for electrical equipment throughout their range in the southeastern US, and now in parts of California. Pad mounted transformers, like the one damaged last month in Carrollton, air conditioning units, traffic controllers, swimming pool pumps and just about any outdoor electrical equipment is at risk.

Why electrical equipment? There are several theories and some data to explain the fire ant's apparent affinity for electrical wiring, switches and equipment. Research done at Texas A&M University in the 1980s showed that fire ants are attracted to the electrical fields that surround wires and especially relay switches. In addition there is some evidence that ants that receive shocks at a relay switch point, for example, release an alarm pheromone that draws other ants into the site. Finally, ground mounted electrical equipment is often warmer than the surrounding soil and probably attracts fire ants to build mounds nearby, especially during winter months. All these things add up to big problems with fire ants (Note: other ant species can cause the same types of problems, presumably for the same reasons).

Why don't utility companies just treat these boxes? Many utility companies do treat any transformers where they find evidence of fire ant activity, but the treatments have a limited life, and the numbers of transformers out there (in the millions) are overwhelming. It is just not economical or practical to treat all electric utility equipment, not to mention every air conditioning unit out there.

Guess where that leaves you as PMPs? It leaves you at the forefront of protecting your customers' homes and property. After working with utility companies and the military for several years on these problems I concluded that the best protection for sensitive equipment is ongoing, thorough fire ant control on the properties where such equipment is located. No other approach works as well.

Residential monthly or quarterly service is an ideal time to provide landscape fire ant control. It's easy for the average homeowner to overlook a regular fire ant inspection and treatment, but building this service into regular pest control treatment provides superior protection against these problems. If your routine pest control service does not provide an option for regular fire ant control you might be missing out on a valuable and useful service for your customers.

It's important to note that landscape fire ant control does not mean treating fire ant mounds piecemeal, only as they are observed. This is the most common, but not the most effective, approach. Landscape fire ant control means using broadcast baits (MaxForce^®, Amdro^®, Extinguish^® and similar products) or granular treatments (usually products containing fipronil or bifenthrin) over the entire area to be protected. Only this approach will control the small colonies that are frequently missed by individual mound treatmens. Only landscape fire ant control will free you and your customers from continually being on the defensive against these ants. For more information about using baits as part of a landscape fire ant control program, see Extension publication B-6099, Broadcast Baits for Fire Ant Control.