Komakazi Fire Ants

Just wondering if anyone else is having problems with fire ants. We are in south central Texas. After every rain they come out in force with the winged queens. They seem to intentionally dive bomb themselves into the pool by the thousands. We had about 6 inches of rain over the weekend and of course the pool was covered with them. I recently invested in a PoolSkim which makes the job of cleanup much easier.

I just wondered what the attraction was to the water. Water sliders also seem to show up after every rain with no other water source in the area. I keep the pool very clean. I guess they like Chlorine, acid and stabilizer.

Yup,

Same here, lots of ants after a rain. We're in Kerrville, so the rain is needed. :p

I had swarms of both black and fire ants earlier this season but I haven't seen them in the pool for a couple of weeks. I had a few days where there were quite a few every evening, but it never really got that bad. ;-)

I'm SE of Houston so you may have a later swarming season than I do..

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Originally Posted by aquarium

Yup,

Same here, lots of ants after a rain. We're in Kerrville, so the rain is needed. :p

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Very familiar with the Kerrville area as I have family that lives there.

I guess I'll chalk off the ants dive bombing the pool to weird behavior and continue to clean up the anti-bodies...:)

Ditto. I live outside of Fort Worth and I must of cleaned those winged ants out at least 3 times yesterday. That's OK, will take the rain when I can get it. They are a aggravating though.

My pool has been over the skimmers for more than 24 hours due to rain and I'm delighted to report that there have not been any dead ants at all floating or otherwise in my pool. I suspect they've all drowned. I won't wish our rain on you guys N and W of here however.

Agreed. I will never complain about the rain in south Texas. We get so little of it during the summer time. I'll deal with the ants but bring on the rain...:)

We had thousands of them in our pool for about 2 weeks. This was a couple weeks ago. The stopped, but this week's rain brought them back again, but not as bad.

My hope is that all this rain brought all the queens to the pool where I scooped them up, drowned them, and when that didn't work, sprayed ant spray and killed them. Now that all the queens are dead, I won't have any more ants in the yard for the rest of the year... OK, I can dream can't I?

Katy area.

Robert