03-16-2014, 07:09 AM
When my daughter was attending Keaau HS in 1999 she and others in her class provided peanut butter stick samples from their homes. Her sample was found to have these tiny fire ants (we live in middle of HPP)and was included in the UH Hilo Ag study. Though we had the ants on our property they did not become problematic until about a year ago, now they are everywhere including the house which is on a slab. Our biggest task is to keep them from farming the aphids on our fruit trees. The only benefit to this outbreak is our Giant African Snail Population has dropped at least 95%.