Beemaster's International Beekeeping Forum
ALMOST BEEKEEPING - RELATED TOPICS => FARMING & COUNTRY LIFE => Topic started by: GSF on September 17, 2014, 09:59:00 pm
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I read where a new species of sugar ants were on the move across the US. I'm not sure if these are that kind.
We've always had sugar ants. However this year has been unreal. I have sprayed permethrin twice on my sugar cane and scuppernongs(scuppernines) only to have them back on it in about 24 hours. If you pull a dying leaf off of a stalk of sugar cane you'll end up with a bunch of ants all over you. They have very much damaged my scuppernongs. This is about the 4th year for some of my vines and they done pretty good. However these ants will crawl up and chew holes in the fruit and it will be full of them. At first I thought it was birds but then I got to looking at all of them and I could see where they started "drilling" at. Later it would split.
Any suggestions for next year? These ants have invaded our house a couple of times, and some are still lurking in the shadows.
This sounds like the new ants I've read about. They don't hesitate to sacrifice their lives to make a bridge over water. I've saw that in my hives.
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spray them with sudsy ammonia do a test branch first
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one might also try Neem oil
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Try a bait station of 1/3 borax, 1/3 grape jelly and 1/3 water. Hopefully they will take it home and kill the colony. Pray for the re release of Chlorodane dust. It used to kill all ants.