I've been living with em for a long time, and these are my conclusions. Do whatever it takes to keep em out of the house. Usually a commercial spray around the perimeter. Hate using it, but everything else doesn't work as far as preventing entry. Outside the house, I keep a big bag of Sevin dust for dusting my setting hens and my free range banny hens. Otherwise, I'd never get a single chick hatched out. I've got one bottle of diazinon, about five years old. One teaspoon on top of the mound will knock em out. But here's the kicker. I don't kill all of them. Poison the nests that are immediately adjacent to the house (those nests that send workers under the doors and through the windows on a daily basis). Mounds away from the house, I leave, unless they're threatening my chickens. They can't survive the chickens scratching yard. They do live outside the pen, and forage into the pen though. The reason I leave mounds alone if their not causin me trouble is that if I kill em all from a large area, the next time they swarm I'll have ten times more fire ants than I originally had. The worker/soldier in nests I leave alone go out and kill all those queens that swarm, preventing new nests.(posted 9644 days ago)It doesn't work all the time, but I rarely have to get out that nasty poison.
There's a man over in Marshall, Tx who was trying to sell an organic fire ant poison, but the State and Fed shut him down because he didn't go through the permitting process. Remember correctly, it was a mix of molasses, vinegar, and ?, can't remember. Do know it was selling briskly hereabouts till he was told he needed a permit. He complained it was all grocery store foodstuffs. Didn't matter. BTW, Marshall, Tx proclaims itself Fire Ant Capital of the World...have fire ant collecting contest, costumes, etc.