FUNNEL ANTS – Are they ruining your lawn?
Summer is here – its time to get rid of ants from your lawns!
On a day-to-day basis, funnels ants are a nusiance to lawn mower blades and often result in an uneven surface which can lead to potential liability issues. Additionally there is the cost of leveling and re-turfing the lawn after a major funnel ant infestation and asthetically would not result in an atractive offer when selling your home!
So what are funnel ants and what can you do to eliminate them?
One thing you may notice in neighbourhoods that are infested with funnel ants, is that some properties are badly affected whereas others are completely untouched. The reason for this is that the environment in the lawns is not favourable for funnel ants – generally this means that the soil and / or the grass type do not allow them to become established. Generally speaking funnel ants prefer sandy soils and find broad leaf grasses less attractive.
In the past controlling funnel ants has not been easy…. for the homeowner. Products available to the homeowner over the counter from Bunnings are designed to kill individual funnel ants on contact, these products mostly contain the active ingredient Bifenthrin which is a repellent syntheic pyrethroid insecticide. Products containing Bifenthrin are however not very good at killing the whole colony.
However, there are some new products available to the professional pest manager and sold by PestandLawnWarehouse online, which are not available in the supermarket or hardware store. There are two very effective products available, applied either as a spray to the surface of the lawn (Termidor or Fipforce Aqua) or spread as a granule (Anthem Granules). The funnel ants come into contact with the insecticide (Fipronil) when they build their funnels. The products contain a slow acting insecticide that not only kills the ants that contact it directly, but it is also transferred to other ants in the colony through contact, ensuring complete colony control. A treatment with either Fipforce Aqua (Our preferred liquid treatment choice) or Anthem Granules (Our preferred Granular choice) will eliminate all the ants from an area and prevent the ants returning for many months (as the treatment remains in the soil for many months). You should expect at least a 6 months control, although many treatments will last over a year. Any ants re-appearing after this time will be a new invasion, often from surrounding properties.
At the first sign of ants, apply either a liquid or Granule treatment to the effected area.
Our technical teams preferred professional products of choice are;
– Fipforce Aqua or Termidor liquid insecticides
– Anthem or Amdro insect granules