The week of heavy rain (I guess) flushed out some ants.

I'll try poison in a spray can and ant motels if the grocer has some. Been stomping a bunch. A few have gotten up on kitchen counters.

I got three bites on my right hand and they haven't shown signs of healing since yesterday. They're pink at the base with light heads. They don't hurt, but look bad. Maybe 2mm across.

Solutions? I dabbed on alcohol, but it hasn't helped. Will try Neosporin or similar salve.


No pain, but I want these to heal. And I may get others by the time this ends.

I'm going to ask the pharmacist if he has any ideas later today. Have to pick up a prescription for something else, anyway. But this board can answer about any question, so I'm asking. I don't know the ant species, but they're little ones. It hurt sharply for a few seconds as each bite arrived. I suspect they deposited some poison in the wounds.

If these are fire ants, which mostly they are, find the nest mound out in your yard. Get some dry ice(frozen CO2), chip off a decent sized chunk, and stick it into the mound. Don't let them get on you, as it will hurt and could put you into anaphylatic shock, if you are allergic to their sting. The CO2 will evaporate, and, the vapor being heavier than air, will permeate the mound killing all inside all the way to the bottom. This is cheaper and much more effective than any of the fire ant remedies I have tried previously.

Don't scratch the little pimple that arises, as it may become infected and may leave a scar. Get some hydrocortisone cream at the drugstore and apply it to reduce the itching. Don't mess with these beasts, as the stings can kill you if you get too many.

If the bites have a head, ice and vinegar is too late.
You try an astringent like witch hazel or Preperation H.

There is a commercial product called After Bite that may be of some use.

I took care of fire ant hills by stirring them up and then blasting them with a yard flamethrower. It was fun, but does result in some damage to the yard.

The silver cans of Raid Maxx seemed to have good ant killing properties.

What Shaggist said about don't scratch...If it's only one or three bites, or if several are concentrated in one place, cover with some tape..any kind will do...Keeps you from scratching, and somehow the tape prevents the itching sensation.

WuzzFuzz

My experience with fire ant bites is they can take as long as 2 weeks to completely heal. They are not your average insect bite. And they are bites, not stings. As far as getting rid of the fire ant mounds, there are products that will kill an individual mound. Orthene works well on a mound. However, getting rid of them completely is an entirely different story. You kill one mound, others will simply show up somewhere else. Fire ant colonies are huge, with the bulk of them underground. Texas A&M is trying to find a way to achieve some level of control over fire ants. Complete (temporary) eradication requires use of baits (Amdro, e.g.) by you and your neighbors over a large area and an extended period of time. This is a difficult problem and complete eradication is probably never going to happen.

Grandma used to dab them with ammonia. It seemed to work but it was done right after the bite. I don't know if it would do you any good at this point.

I hate those little bleepers.

__________________
Dum vivo cano

Enough hydrocortisone can cure any minor skin ailment!

From your description of the bites, you have fire ants. Every time we have a soaking rain we have many fire ants mounds around the house and in the pastures. If you have lots of ant mounds, it’s pointless to treat one mound at a time. I use fire ant bait in a broadcast spreader. The solution is to kill as many as possible over as large an area as possible, including the queen ant in the mound.

__________________
A gun has no brain.. use yours

JingleBob, they are a pain in the rear... or elsewhere. Amdro is effective as a broadcast bait but it's not cheap, and then there is the problem of the surviving ants for a few days after the queen dies.
For isolated colonies, down here they can be basketball sized and cave at the slightest touch, I use Bifen I/T which is the best all around insecticide I've ever used. I'll wet the ground around the base with a pump sprayer then thoroughly wet, not soak, the mound.
Colony is dead within a couple of hours, never to return.

I found that a good bottle of single malt, burbon, tequila will cure most things

Antihistamine creme (Diphenhydramine aka Benadryl) work great on inscet bites of all sorts.

Try pimple cream dries them up

Does one develop an immunity to fire ants? The first few times I got bit seemed the worst Later, when I would occasionally get bit wiping out hills, it got to be that I would hardly notice.

A tea kettle of boiling water will also put a dent in their population for those who not have a flame thrower handy.

See highlighted portion of quote: this is what's bothering me. I have asthma and am probably especially in danger from insect and arthropod bites.

And I think these are fire ants.

Thanks for the help.

Preperation H will stop the itch, and give those bites a chance to heal. It's a local anesthetic. I've used Andro, but I've heard of the dry ice method, just be darn careful around the nest (s). Good luck, TS.

__________________
Halfway and one more step

I've actually sloshed a bit of hot water on a few that got on my stove top. I was boiling water for tea and the targets were there, so...

I may dab the wounds with a tea bag after it cools off. The tannins may help healing.

It makes total sense that Preparation H would be an astringent.

Messing with the mounds just makes them spread. And if you keep scratching, they'll take longer to heal and scratching doesn't help the itching.

__________________
"He was kinda funny lookin'"

I don't know about fire ants but for me it worked the opposite way with members of the bee/wasp families. When I was a kid my Dad raised bees and I was stung numerous times, now I am deathly allergic.

Texas A&M and others have been working on it since the 1930s when fire ants entered the US thru the Port of Mobile from South America. The EPA has banned most of the effective poisons.

__________________
CSM, U S Army(Ret) 1963-1990

I work in the soil here much of the time and often fail to wear gloves. I have had thousands of fire ant bites over the years. They typically take several days to heal up. You might speed it up by taking a needle and letting the fluid out of the little white pustule that forms, and putting some Neosporin on them, but I usually just ignore them till they heal.

Oh yeah I be not a doctor so don’t be taking this as medical advice. LOL And don't try and sue me if your hand falls off.

They are just illegal aliens from South America, so please know our government is working on the problem.

Good luck Texas Star....ant's bites can be problematic..Try to catch one (if not already done) and identify the species can help in the future...bites.
R.

Ammonia is a base and bases work well for most bites/stings if applied right away (BTW: Urine is good for jellyfish stings. We used it in Belize and it does work)

They would eventually make their way back from mounds in neighboring yards, but a BBQ propane tank and a 500,000 btu torch (I upgraded from a mere 50,000 btu) killed off every fire ant mound in my yard when I lived in SC.

Years ago there was a product called--Stop Alert--and the main ingredient was Dairy Cow Urine. It worked very well for me. It's not available any more and I wonder why. It seemed safe to use.