I think there is a minimum temperature at which the ants are active - the bag should have a range on a side panel, but I THINK it's over 55, maybe over 65F. If there is no info on the bag, call your local county extension office - someone there should be able to tell you. If that doesn't work, there should be a customer service 800 # on the bag, so call the company and ask. If you spread it when the forecast calls for several days of temps in the 60's, you should be pretty safe.

Thanks Dibbit. I've already used one jug of Extinguish a couple of months ago, and probably have at least another 15 mounds to treat. I think I'll wait until spring. With the dry weather the fire ants have just gone crazy this year.

But you know... I have seen active mounds in the middle of the winter! during a warm spell. Kinda scary. I would think that as long as you can see active ants you could bait them.

Too true, John. Since our ground here never really freezes it only takes a few unusually warm days to get them active.

They are active on sunny winter days when the entire colony will be concentrated inside the top of the mound enjoying the warnth of the winter sun heating up the soil of the mound. I take advantage of this fact by walking around my pasture with a shovel in the late afternoon of a sunny day when it is forecast to freeze that evening. I'll dig and scatter the mound, slinging the ants as far as I can toss them. Any ants that can't make it back underground before it frost are dead. It usually just takes 1 or 2 visits to a mound to get rid of it. This is the method I have been using for years to rid my 16 acre pasture of fire ants, since I don't trust using pesticides on food that my livestock will be eating.

Hi,

Does anyone know what the fire ants do if you pour boing water on them. Thanks

The problem with disturbing the colony, by pouring boiling water on them, etc., is that it doesn't kill off the queen(s). Perhaps disturbing them just before a freeze will get the queen(s), if they were up near the surface and got tossed away from the mound, but it's been my experience that the only thing that happens when the mound is disturbed is that the colony moves elsewhere - sometimes far enough to go to a neighbors, but it's NOT dead. Baits are the only thing that truly get rid of a colony as they will - eventually - kill off the queen(s).