Fire ants move after heavy rain

The morning after a heavy Gulf Coast storm, a yard can look like it grew a dozen new fire ant mounds overnight. It did not. Those are the same colonies, pushed up out of flooded galleries.

Why it matters for treatment

A colony that has just relocated is close to the surface and actively foraging, which is the best window a broadcast bait will get. Treating three days after a storm generally beats treating three weeks after one.

Mound drenches are for emergencies

A drench kills the mound you can see. It does not touch the satellite colonies in the same yard, and in a bad year a single acre can carry two hundred of them. Yard-wide broadcast bait is what actually lowers the pressure.

Give it time

Bait works by being carried to the queen, which takes weeks rather than hours. A yard that still has activity ten days after a broadcast is a yard where the bait is working, not one where it failed.