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Ants in the .....

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Ants in the .....
  • Ants in the Solar Charger

    If you have use electric fencing for your pastures, be on the lookout for ANTS!

    Black ants built a nest in the battery compartment of my solar fence charger and took it out. Hopefully once it is cleaned out it will once again function properly. Thankfully we have 3 pastures each with a solar charger, so we had one available that we could borrow. (we only use 1 pasture at a time)

    At this point I will put a little ant poison at the base of the chargers, which are not in the pasture, and am also thinking of putting a little silicon bead around the battery compartment door to help keep insects out.

    Ants are attracted to electrical stuff so they could do damage to non solar stuff as well!
  • Huh, never heard of that!  We've had weird nests of them with wings popping up out of cracks in the ground lately.......  Still working on getting rid of the big black ones.  Kill off one colony and then another shows up!
  • We have fire ants that build around any utility device - gas meter - septic pump - whatever. 
    Dana, aren't those termites?  The ones with wings?  They bore in and shed the wings?  Not sure. 
    I think the silicone idea is great!
    Been meaning to say, I got some Combat ant bait/traps that are little clear trays with liquid inside.  THOSE THINGS PUT A HURTIN' ON SOME ANTS!  Of course there seems to be an endless supply of ants.  I just get some degree of satisfaction from seeing all the little black bodies floating in the liquid.  *evil grin*
  • Face,  I know what you mean,  I had the same problem with
    outdoor electric boxes where I used to work.  they would get into
    the breakers and cause them to go pow.  LOL
     
    I used an ant poison that was a thick liquid that you put on little
    squares of paper and just lay them in the box.
     
    they carry the bait (food)back to the main colony where they eat it and
    die.    It had arsenic in it.  
     
    Hunter when an ant colony gets so big the extra queens (ones with wings)
    take off to start a new colony. 
     
    To deduce whether the insect is a flying ant, look closely at the body. Ants have three separate body parts: head, thorax (chest), and abdomen (tail). The legs of an ant are all attached to the thorax just behind the head in the midsection of the insect. The thorax joins the abdomen in a very thin area that resembles a waist. Ants also have a distinctive and obvious near-90-degree bend in their antennae.
     
    Flying termites only have a head and body. They do not have a thorax or a "waist". The legs of a flying termite are attached all along the length of the body, rather than sprouting from one small area of the midsection. Furthermore, the antennae of flying termites tend to sweep forward, but lack the telltale right-angle bend of the ant's antennae.
     
    The double-set wings of a termite are of equal length, while the double-set wings of an ant are not. However this may be harder to notice if the insect has its wings folded back along its body.
     
    Biology lesson for today.   LOL.
  • These were too little to be termites, probably 1/3 of an inch long and there were also regular looking ants coming out of the same hole in the ground, well, not so much a hole as a crack in the ground and then several feet later, more of them coming out of what appeared to be a connected crack.....
     
    We use Terro ant bait, same thing Hunter was talking about, floaters and all!!