07-21-2013, 08:54 AM
quote:
Originally posted by reni
A friend of mine showed me how he deals w/ LFA in their palms , lilikoi and trees. He places the granule Amdro bait in aluminum..... Folds it to keep the rain out and attaches it to the tree. It's a little more time consuming but maybe a safer way, especially w/ lilikoi or fruit trees.
I tried a similar technique, but unlike your friend I wasn't smart enough to use foil... I bought expensive weather proof bait stations. It does work, but the problem is that even protected from the rain, the high humidity ruins the amdro quickly. I would say it stays viable for a day, maybe two, then once it absorbs humidity either the poison quits working or the bait is no longer attractive to the ants. According to the ant lab, the viable timeframe for amdro outside the bottle in Hawaii is more like 4 hours.
I've resigned myself to have "LFA free zones" which include around the house, and the areas we want our pets to frequent. The LFA will come inside and you usually don't realize it until you get stung. A quick sprinkling of amdro around the outside of the house (under the eaves where the rain won't instantly ruin it) seems to eliminate them for the better part of a season. The problem with broadcast spreading amdro all over the property to kill the ground population is that our free range chickens would eat it since the carrier is corn grits. In order to kill the ants out in the field we need to 1) protect the amdro from moisture 2) protect the amdro from the chickens and 3) get the granules within 10 feet of the ants we want to kill. Amdro is an effective poison, but it's very difficult to use effectively in this environment. As far as I know the only natural predator of LFA is a species of phorid fly, and I don't know if there is any research on bringing them to the island. My guess is that there won't be any serious research into eradicating LFA from Hawaii until it spreads to the other islands.