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Fire ants

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gunswayne:
I?ve been out of town working.  I checked my hives when I returned home and found that I lost one to fire ants. I?ll be waging war on the ant population this weekend. As for the hive, how do I go about cleaning it up for the bees I?ll be moving into it? Will the comb be salvageable?

Live Oak:
In my experience, as bad as the fire ants are here in TN, I have never seen a hive lost to fire ants.  I HAVE seen where the fire ants moved in to clean up a dead hive or a hive that has collapsed.  Were there still any live bees in this hive when you found it with the fire ants inside? 

I have my own war on fire ants that is beginning its 2nd season soon.  I went through about 12 cans of Ambdro which is my main go to treatment for fire ants but in some case I spray the mount if the Ambdro does not wipe them out.  I use Walmart SuperTech brake cleaner to kill ants that get into the tops of the inner covers and anywhere else on the outsides of the hives as it instantly kills that ants and rapidly evaporates leaving no chemical residue. 

I prefer to kill a fire ant mound with Ambdro because the ants take down into the mound deep in the ground and store it as well as consume it killing them.  The Ambdro they store remains and kills any fire ants that later move into that mound thus putting a double whammy on them. 

If you have a really bad fire ant problem and requires chemical treatment of a large number of mounds, I like Orthene WP. 

gunswayne:
I live in se Texas cattle country. Tons of fire ants everywhere including my 5 acres. Mounds everywhere. I?ll try the ortho.
The hive very well could have been dead. They didn?t ever get past 1 box and never filled all the frames up. I was out of town for most of December and January with work. When I was home it wasn?t in the daylight so all I had to go by were my teen boys reports on feed consumption and bee sightings.  I have two weeks to check the rest of my hives then gone for another 6 weeks right during the prime spring run.

van from Arkansas:
Mr. Wayne, I am not sure most beeks understand the country you live in is prime ant country.  I have seen your pastures that were un calfable.  That means so many ant mounds that any calf dropped (born) was doomed, covered by ants in seconds.  Just ant mounds everywhere, maybe 6 ft apart covering untreated acres.  South Texas, what a hunters paradise, but off subject so I stop.

Ugly subject: cleaning out wax cells with dead larva follows!!

Your question regarding cleaning up a dead out.  I use an air hose to clean out cells with dead larva, bees.  I realize a person can simply place the dirty frames in a new hive and the nurse bees will clean but my concern would be sepsis, that is disease from dead bee bodies.  The dead larva in capped cells rot and are full of bacteria that well,,,, feed on bee cells.  This is not good to expose nurse bees to the tremendous numbers of sepis bacteria if you have a lot of dead.

I do not know if you have dead capped larva, nor how many, but if you do have many then consider an air hose to blow out dead matter.  Blowing out cells with dead larva is a nasty, stinky job, be careful or you will blow the most awful stink on yourself.

Live Oak covered, very well I might add, on destroying ant mounds so no need for me to duplicate.

gunswayne:
Thank you gentlemen. You have been of great help!

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