Topic: BITTEN BY RED ANTS

[tas]

HI
I WAS CHECKING ON MY COMPSOT AND I WAS BITTEN BY RED ANTS, I AM THINKING OF PUTTIN ANT KILLER POWDER EVERY WHERE DO U GAYS THINK ITS A GOOD IDEA....

THERE ARE SO MANY EVERY WHERE!!!!!!!

[RenishawPhil]

Oh I've been bitten by red ants 3 times thus year gerrr. Our girls eat ant eggs but they don't go to the allotment!

Oh I am gay lol. Well noticed ;D :D

[OllieC]

I'm a breeder but shall try to help!

I've have found that they move on if you disperse the nest and also that they appear to stay out of the black ant territory. So my solution is to try to encourage the blacks whilst sending the reds all over the place at any opportunity.
 
I read somewhere that it's an actual sting, not a bite, and yes it hurts like hell!

[pigeonseed]

Ooh it does hurt!!

They're very active at the moment aren't they? I've just got used to keeping an eye open for them, and basically leaving them alone until they've grabbed their eggs and made their escape.
So I'm with Ollie, disturb them, then come back later and they'll probably be gone.

[Pescador]

Yep,its a sting.
They inject Formic Acid, the same that is used by Bees and Nettles.

[Nora42]

I put my wrist on top of a nest last saturday when planting out beetroot, ouch got bitten about 7 times first it went white then red and by Sunday i had a lump on my wrist the size of another fist, I react badly to insect bites  as a whole but this was special and to top it the lady at the chemist tried to fob me off with antihisamine for hayfever, like that was ever going to work. never fear my polish neighbour had some stronger polish medicine so I took that and now i have a red hard patch with tiny bumps but at least my wrist is not swollen, the ants have gone but i noticed them farming black fly on my runner beans - I don't care how many I flick through the air now!
Nora

[Toshofthe Wuffingas]

As a geeky kid many years ago I used to keep ants. The ant in question is probably Myrmica rubra (unless the taxonomists have tinkered with the names). It is long and thin and a dark gingery colour. Yes they do sting like a wasp though not as painful. It's little more painful than a nettle sting. They eat a lot of pests and don't nurture aphids like the common black ant so go easy on them.
There's an underground ant that doesn't come to the surface that is often mistaken for the red ant. It is plump and yellowy orange and does not sting or bite at all.

[Borlotti]

Been bitten many times by red ants.  Wait until they get in your knickers/pants and then you will run about the allotment.  It is normally when I am cutting the grass edges, but so far this year have been lucky not to find any, perhaps they don't like the rain, but the sting soon wears off, unless you are allergic to them. Remember when I dug up a wasps nest, and they chased me round the allotment, still a bit worried about digging in that particular spot. Don't know much about wasps, but it was a nest in the grass, in the ground, and it was some kind of flying insect, and I didn't put my spade down and  must have looked funny running round my allotment in circles still holding my spade.

[Buster54]

Been bitten many times by red ants.  Wait until they get in your knickers/pants
 
Thanks for the happy memory Borlotti but my story is for after the watershed

Think I would prefer red to black my black ants are farming aphids for their honeydew in my polytunnel

[picman]

I would not go mad with the ant powder... just find the nest and dig it over, or boiling water if its on the compost....blackfly and ants on BB are early this year had to wash them off as masses of flowers too .

[antipodes]

Actually the antihistamine may well have worked. Bathe it in a bicarbonate of soda solution, that often soothes it.

In Australia we have big ants called bull ants. They are right bardstads. A bite from one had you running back from the letterbox in agony until you could stick ice on it...  My dad, obviously favouring the ecological method, once poured petrol down the nest and set it alight.
They went away for a while then made another nest about 3 metres further away...

[chriscross1966]

Put up with them, way better to have red ants than black, they don't farm aphids.... I'd only use the powder on a black ant nest adn then only if I needed it gone in a couple of days... otherwise if you must get rid of them (they kill so many bad things) then use ant bait stations....

[OllieC]

I will take a photo of the red ants farming aphids on my broadies if you want.

[chriscross1966]

I will take a photo of the red ants farming aphids on my broadies if you want.

Really?.... oh well, kill the lot of em...... never seen it before on mine... seen them raiding the black ants patches, assumed they were carrying the things off to eat....

[OllieC]

I will take a photo of the red ants farming aphids on my broadies if you want.

Really?.... oh well, kill the lot of em...... never seen it before on mine... seen them raiding the black ants patches, assumed they were carrying the things off to eat....

This is the first year I've noticed it and they appear to require more herdsmen than the black ones. Perhaps they've been picking up bad habits from their black cousins  :-\

[sorrel]

I couldnt stop laughing when I read the post about ants in your knickers.........I had to run in the shed and take off my trousers today....ants in my pants too. Some lovely bites as well. ;D

[Uncle Ted]

Ants?  chils play! 4 horsefly bites on the same hand will open your eyes to discomfort and pain!

[Kea]

Seems to be a bad year for that I have had several incidents this year. The worst one at the allotment and one went right down from my neck to my bottom then went mad biting my bottom. I ended up taking trousers down at the allotment to try and find it in desperation...(in my car!!) then drove home finally locating and killing it but it bit me several times more and I swell up badly when bitten by anything with 6 legs.