Let me first remind you that there will be an Unwanted Pesticide Collection Day at the Robeson County Fairgrounds, Highway 41 South, Lumberton, next Tuesday, March 28, from 10 a.m. until 2 p.m. This collection day is provided by the Robeson County Center of the North Carolina Cooperative Extension Service and the North Carolina Department of Agriculture.

This will be an opportunity for our local farmers to get rid of some of the outdated and unwanted pesticides they might have stored on the farm. But I want to especially encourage homeowners to take advantage of this opportunity as well.

Many homeowners have old pesticides stored under the kitchen sink, in the storage room, or in the shop. Some of these pesticides are out of date, are no longer any good, or may no longer be needed. Unfortunately, these pesticides are not very well protected, and children are often harmed when they accidentally come in contact with them.

Many homeowners will dispose of these pesticides by pouring them down the kitchen sink or placing them in the garbage can, both of which are illegal and can cause serious harm to our environment. So do what is right. Gather them up and take them to the Fairgrounds next Tuesday for proper disposal.

I have had numerous phone calls and E-mails recently about the misinformation that is in circulation about low-cost mulch coming out of the storm-damaged areas of Louisiana and Mississippi. I would like to advise everyone that this is a hoax; there is no foundation to the fears that people are trying to spread about these mulching materials being infested with Formosan termites. The Louisiana Department of Agriculture and Forestry established a quarantine on October 3, 2005, that requires all woody debris in the quarantined areas to be shipped to approved landfills within the quarantined areas.

Some of the debris is being burned as fuel, but there are several state agencies inspecting this debris ever day as it is being deposited into the landfills. All contractors that are mulching the materials are well aware of the regulations and are abiding by them. You can learn more about this by going to http://www.agctr.lsu.edu/termites/.

Another topic I have been receiving a lot of phone calls about recently is fire ants. This is not a new problem but one that most of us have learned to live with.

Because of the mild weather, we have seen fire ant activity throughout the winter. But fire ant activity will increase drastically during the next couple of months. In addition to the individual fire ant colonies becoming more active, April is the time of the year that fire ants will reproduce and additional colonies will establish in the landscape.

Normally, all ants in a colony are females. The female queen has only one purpose in life and that is to lay eggs. Most of the year, all of the eggs that hatch are infertile females. So all the worker ants are females, and none of them can lay eggs.

But at a certain time of the year, usually in April and then again in September, the queen will lay eggs that will hatch into males and females that are capable of reproducing. These ants have wings and will fly from the colony, mate in mid-air, and then fall to the ground.

The now fertile female digs into the ground to start a new mound. She begins to lay eggs, all of which will hatch into females. The poor old male has served his purpose in life and wanders off to die.

I share this with you to let you know that next month is the very best time of the year to treat for fire ants. Treatments are much more effective before the mounds become well established and when the ants are feeding vigorously to recover from the long winter when they were mostly inactive. Although many people tell me that they cannot kill fire ants, in fact, they are very easy to kill. The problem most people face is that they do not use the materials they purchase properly to actually kill the queen fire ant. It does little good to kill a lot of workers and not kill the queen, since she will simply relocate and continue to lay eggs.

The key to effective treatments with most products is to make sure the chemicals are moved into the soil in order to make contact with the queen. Simply placing them on the top of the mound usually does very little good.

The label on most products advise to water the material into the soil, but the instructions fail to mention that it usually takes as much as five gallons of water to properly dissolve the material and to move it far enough into the soil to come in contact with the queen. Failure to use sufficient water will simply cause the mound to relocate.

A new product on the market that appears to be extremely effective is Over-and-Out. This product is designed to be broadcast over the landscape. The worker ants gather the material and carry it into the mound where it is fed on by all workers and the queen. The queen ceases to lay eggs so no new workers are produced to gather food for the colony, and the workers die off as well.

This material must also be used according to the label in order to be effective. The containers of this material that you might purchase state that it will treat 5,000 square feet. Therefore, quite a bit of the product will be needed to treat large landscapes, which is often something the property owner is not willing to do.

Once spread, the material must be gathered up by the worker ants and moved into the colony fairly quickly. If it is left exposed to the sun and air for very long it will lose its effectiveness. A suggestion when using this material -- First place a piece of candy close to a fire ant colony and leave it there for about 30 minutes. Come back to inspect the candy. If it is covered with ants, it means the ants are actively feeding, and you can begin to spread the material. The ants will usually begin gathering it up and carrying it into their mounds as you spread it.

If there are no ants on the candy, put the material back into the storage room and wait for a better day. No ants means that the weather is not right for the ants. It may be too cool, too wet, or too hot for them to be actively feeding.

If you have any questions about the topics I have mentioned today, please give me a call at 910-671-3276.

E-mail address: Everett_Davis@ncsu.edu

Mailing Address:
P. O. Box 2280
Lumberton, NC 28359-2280

Phone: 910-671-3276
Fax: 910-671-6278

Date Created 06/26/06