Bad News for my Fire Ants (Solenopsis)

[MadVampy]

Well I have some bad news. I went to New Jersey for two weeks for work (got back Saturday the 26th) and while I was gone my landlord had a pest control company come in and spray, he does this annually and I'm usually here to keep the pest control guy from spraying the room where my ants are but not this time. As you can guess I lost all of my colonies! My big one with over a 10000 ants (guessing because as you know ants are hard to count ), another with I'm guessing around a 1000-1500 ants and then 12 new starter colonies from queens I had got back in October, all dead! So it's a very sad week for me. I spent the last 2 days going thru the nests hoping to find maybe at least the a queen alive but nope all were dead along with the workers.

I'm not sure what they sprayed but it was effective as hell! So now I have to wait until spring/summer to re establish some new colonies, kinda sucks because the big colony was almost 2 years old now.

I was going to do a video of the carnage and results of the search and place it on my YT channel but I'm just so damned pissed/depressed about it that I don't even want the reminder to exist. Today will be the day I start dismantling and cleaning all the nests, tubing, test tubes and outworlds in preparation of the future Solenopsis (and maybe other species) ants.

[ClashOwenBash]

[JoeHostile1]

Wow they fumigated it so much that it would have been unlivable for a few days? And no one bothered to check if there was pets or animals in the unit? Seems extremely wreckless with toxic chemicals if you ask me. If you had a cat or dog in there with someone coming by once a day to feed it it sounds like it would also be dead. If I were you I’d be calling the company and trying to get the fumigator fired. Are they not supposed to do some due diligence and make sure they’re not killing any animals/pets?

[MadVampy]

Wow they fumigated it so much that it would have been unlivable for a few days? And no one bothered to check if there was pets or animals in the unit? Seems extremely wreckless with toxic chemicals if you ask me. If you had a cat or dog in there with someone coming by once a day to feed it it sounds like it would also be dead. If I were you I’d be calling the company and trying to get the fumigator fired. Are they not supposed to do some due diligence and make sure they’re not killing any animals/pets?

I already contacted the company and they always check for "Pets" meaning cats, dogs, pet rodents (mice or rats), reptiles, so forth but ants are considered a "PEST" and also I had black out material covering the nests and out worlds so the guy never saw the ants to start with. The chemicals they used are 100% FDA, and State approved pesticides and the company has all their state licences. There was a notice on the door stating what day they were comming to do the treatment (of course I wasn't here to see or read it) and that the tenant is to give 8hrs for the application to settle before returning, so they did what they were supposed to do. My doors in my house are generally kept closed so the person spraying placed them exactly the way they were when he left.

Basically the room was sprayed, the pest guy didn't know to look for pet "Ants", he and the company did their jobs correctly by company policies and state laws and fulfilled the contracted job. In hind sight next time I leave town I will make sure I take my colonies to a friends house to be looked after, also I am going to make the new setup's portable so they can be easily moved if needed.

[antnest8]

wow that's like the most tragic ant disaster yet that Iv'e heard of.