I'm glad you asked because I recently found a huge ant nest under some stones near some of my roses! And when I started to dig up their area they got on my arms and started to bite! Be careful!

Whatever you do, be careful. It's scary (I believe that's the right millennial word) out there.

Ants never hurt anything here but I'm not familiar with the type of ants in your area... So I'm no help I guess...lol...

Be careful, they could be fire ants. I was cleaning out a wood pile and I disturbed a nest of them. I received many bites. Luckily I had some steroid cream to put on the bites.

Ants can do damage to a rose. They sometimes make huge mounds around a rose and can almost bury it. I've been fighting ants on a few of my roses this year. I would flood the hole and then go back and make sure they have left the nest before you plant your rose.

I have not had this issue with roses, but ants made a huge colony around a peony. They tunneled around & made mounds of sand over it. Eventually the rain, snow and weather washed away the sand this spring. The poor peony, roots and all were totally exposed before I noticed it this spring. I had to fix up the soil there. Hopefully, it will survive & do okay. As for your spot; I agree about watering & disturbing so they move. If you want to violently remove them, boil a kettle of water & pour. As long as the water won't hit any other plants or roots. I can't kill anything, but my husband did this with a colony of some kind of biting ants in the yard. Haven't seen them since.

Thanks everyone! This isn't something I've run into before. I probably won't be predigging my holes anymore! I'll use boiling water to flood them out . I'm sure I have plenty of ants elsewhere:)

I think it was Jeri who wrote about using a stick of cinnamon in an ant hole to help get rid of them. I've tried this and it seems to work very well!

"White bellied with reddish legs" in red clay soil? When I think of white "ants", termite nymphs & workers come to mind. May want to check them out carefully. Sue

https://extension.tennessee.edu/WebPacket/Pages/WP-2014-03-TermiteControl.aspx 

(Copy & paste this into another window to find it. Seem to have trouble linking to these secure sites.)

http://www.termite.com/termites/termites-tennessee.html