Prepare to Protect Almonds from Fire Ants This Season

There’s a lot to prepare for as almond season approaches. From pruning and orchard maintenance to fertilization and irrigation management, ensuring a successful season takes a great deal of planning. Making sure fire ant control is part of the plan is essential to the success of your operation.

The damage caused by protein-feeding ants to exposed almonds not only undercuts the painstaking work that goes into growing them but also diminishes profits and affects your bottom line.

How do fire ants threaten almond operations?

The damage fire ants can do to the nuts themselves is staggering. Once nuts have been shaken or have fallen to the ground, they become even more susceptible to ant damage. This damage can downgrade the quality of the nut or make them unsellable. Thus, impacting your bottom line.

What can be done about the fire ant threat?

Once you’ve spotted fire ants in your almond orchards, odds are the colonies have been growing underground for some time. Being proactive and stopping young colonies from developing into problem colonies is the best practice.

However, finding a treatment solution that can be used on or around food crops can be challenging. Fortunately, Central Life Sciences has the answer for controlling problem fire ant colonies in almond orchards with a product that can be used anywhere fire ants are found, including almond orchards.

Extinguish® Professional Fire Ant Bait is designed to stop young colonies from developing into problem colonies. This effective, economical, and versatile solution contains the active ingredient (S)-methoprene, an Insect Growth Regulator (IGR) which affects a fire ant queen's reproductive ability. As existing workers die naturally, they are not replaced by a new generation. The queen eventually starves to death and the entire colony is eliminated. This stops young colonies from developing into problem colonies in almond orchards. A few more important features and benefits of Extinguish® Professional Fire Ant Bait include:

Controls Imported fire ants, Southern (California) fire ants and pavement ants (protein feeding)
Can be used with confidence around people, livestock and pets.
Controls and eliminates colonies — no mound movement.
Should be applied at 1-1.5 lb. per acre.
Available in 25 lb. bags
No aquatic setback; can be used up to water’s edge
Apply Extinguish Professional® Fire Ant Bait as needed, when ants are active and foraging (when soil temperature is above 60 degrees Fahrenheit).

For more information on Extinguish® Professional Fire Ant Bait, visit our product page.

Central Life Sciences shares information on how Extinguish® Professional Fire Ant Bait can help protect almonds from fire ants.