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Also, Siesta DEFINITELY works to kill the ground-level LFAs, and it works quick. It will probably get rid of 99% of your pet's bites, unless your cats spend a lot of time climbing trees.
Terracore, I was mindful of your posts on Tango, but couldn't readily find any Provaunt. I wonder if I'm attributing Tango's apparent success to Siesta's deadliness. I can only really see the tiny buggers at eye level or lower, and these might have well climbed down and feasted on Siesta granules. The ones higher up are really hard to quantify, short of shaking the trees and getting bit. (My curiosity has its limits).
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quote:
Originally posted by terracore
Forget Tango, it doesn't work.
Do you have more than your personal experience on which to base this blanket assertion ?
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"Do you have more than your personal experience on which to base this blanket assertion ?"
"Terracore, Do the Siesta bait granules attract or harm dogs or cats"
Tango was never used by the Hawaii Ant Lab to eradicate LFA infestations on neighbor islands. That seems to be a pretty good indicator of it's lack of efficacy. Look at their web site
http://www.littlefireants.com/ The hold up in recommending products that actually work in trees seemed to be courting a manufacturer (for years) to issue a temporary label for use of a product for LFA (and it was only issued for Hawaii and only through 2019 and currently only Provaunt). They recommended Tango on the Big Island because it was the only product authorized for spraying into trees. There are a variety of products that have always worked on the ground better than any of the tree formulas and HAL ranked Siesta as the best. These are just my opinions based not only on personal experience but also the information on the state HAL web site. The research and data is out there an easily searchable.
Siesta is 99.937% inert ingredients (corn grits) and the insecticide is a new class of sodium channel blocker that is extremely targeted to ants. It actually works by putting the ants into a sleep they never wake from (hence the name Siesta) rather than killing them directly. It's toxicity to non-target species is not known. And by not known I don't mean that its a mystery, more like they have fed rats a room full of this stuff and the rats were fine. But again, do your own research. Our dogs have shown no interest in eating it but our chickens see the corn grits and would think its feeding time. When we put Siesta on the ground we cover it with a chunk of old roofing material and put a rock on it. Since LFA tend to stick close to their nest I would recommend putting about a tablespoon underneath something about every 20 feet around your house to get complete eradication. If you have LFA indoors you can sprinkle a tiny amount of siesta (like 1/2 a teaspoon) wherever you see the ants and they will be gone the next day and won't return for a very long time. LFA suck the poison oils out of Siesta and take it back to the colony where they share it with the queen and others and then you don't see them again until the colony gets reestablished. Since LFA live in interconnected colonies they are impossible to eradicate unless you can treat every colony each is connected with.
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Regarding Tango vs Provaunt, the correct answer is... both?
From the Hawaii Ant Lab Announcements column at
http://www.littlefireants.com/ ....
Monday, December 15, 2014
After about 4 years of negotiations, we finally have a "Special Needs Permit" to allow Provaunt to be used in the HAL gel bait.
Provaunt contains indoxacarb which is a new class of pesticide with a very low non-target toxicity. It works very differently from Tango and is very fast acting. Ideally, I would recommend that people use Tango for 3-4 treatments, then switch to Provaunt bait. This combination would have the best overall effect - the Tango disabling the queens, followed by Provaunt to wipe out any survivors.
We use this combination approach with the eradications on Maui, Kauai and Oahu and it has been very effective.
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Thanks for the additional info. We're about to do our 3rd treatment with Tango, and if we don't notice a significant change by the 4th treatment, will consider supplementing with Provaunt. I doubt Siesta would be much help to us as we need to treat our many trees. Good luck everyone !
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The guy at CPS told me that their customers weren't seeing any change with Tango until after about 8 months of treatments. But I guess that's considered anecdotal.
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Tango did nothing for the first two treatments where I followed the directions from LFA pdf. The ants didn't seem to pay any attention to it.
But when I changed the recipe to use 3 cups warm milk (with 2tsp brewers yeast and 1tsp sugar, xanthum, 2 cups coconut oil) instead of water and they ate that until its gone in a matter of hours.
The formula you use seems to matter a lot.
aloha
aloha
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When I was in my disillusionment phase with Tango and the LFA weren't interested in the gel bait I contacted the HAL and they recommended a specific liver powder from Argentina instead of peanut butter in the recipe for finicky fire ants. The LFA actually went out of their way to avoid the liver powder (I should have taken pictures). I'm not blaming the ant lab at all... I think that the ants go through phases where they are attracted or repulsed by various things and I think you are 100% right that the formula matters a lot depending on what the LFA want/need at that specific moment.
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I spoke with the lady at the Ant Lab who said that the LFA eat honeydew from certain insects. I expressed surprise and asked what's up with the peanut butter and why not sweet bait? She said that they eat many things and that it is a question of what is in the shortest supply and what is therefor most attractive to them at the moment. I can see that being pretty variable.
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Heard though reliable sources, farmers, that Siesta is the way to go.
read through the PDF-says 12 hours clear weather but I heard that 4 hours is enough for the buggahs to get it in their system.
Seems to me that if you use caution and common sense then its pretty easy.
And Unlike tango there's no messy prep work.
http://www.domyownpestcontrol.com/msds/SIESTA.pdf
One Thing I can always be sure of is that things will never go as expected.
