ANT NEST!!!!!!! Help!!!
 

hey you know the cute little sugar ants??? well they have infested my one orchid! its a BLC. Campobello 'Mendenhall' and it my favorite Cattleya! Today i went outside to look at the progression of a couple of new growths and i noticed a trail of these little sugar ants and they were going up and down the pot around the rim. so i said time to go and poured water on them! well then a whole army of them came out! They were carrying the little white babys and some eggs!!! a total Nightmare Situation! so i took it out side and put on the water hose and then when the water reached the top of the pot (its a small 6 or 8 inch pot kinda shallow flat cone you know the look) eggs were littered on the water surface!! so i just put the water on it for about 5 minutes to make sure they got washed away( it doubled as my pot flushing as well LOL) and i put it out of my collection and they were still there! What can i do??? im desperate! Will neem oil work??? How do i use it? Please Help Me!

I don't know how to use the oil (no experience) but when I want to get rid of ants I place the whole orchid under water in a 5 gallon bucket and let it sit for an hour. It worked. Actually I think I forgot it and left it for 3 to 4 hrs LOL.

Drown them as Swamper said I would not use Neem in the pot a drop of dish soap in the water will help then flush again . The plant can be put back with the rest .

I haven't got experience with orchids, but I do have experience with sugar ants. The best advise I have for you is to go and get Terro Ant Killer (the liquid kind). It was available in my local hardware store for about $4.00. You simply put a little drop on the included cardboard squares and place it in their path. They'll think its the best thing since honey and bring reinforcements to lap it up. Then they bring it back to the colony and share it. The thing about Terro is it takes a couple of days to work so that there is time to disperse it among the entire colony but in 3 days time I doubt you will see a single ant. Oh, and don't go and do what so many others do and squash the black mass of ants at the drop of insecticide. Terro is so effective because they BRING IT BACK and disperse it.

There are different ways to get rid of those little sugar ants. If you have an isolated nest in a pot with all of those eggs and things, don't disturb the nest so they stay put. You can't drown ants with just plain water unless you hold each of their little heads under for a long time. The ants might leave when you water them, but they just leave and go somewhere else or they come back again. Instead, go and get a quart container of water. Put several drops of dish washing liquid into the water and drench the plant medium. This seems to break the surface tension on their bodies and they drown or suffocate. After 10 minutes, flush out the medium with clean water to get out the soap.

If you think that the ants are part of a larger colony (they are coming from a nest somewhere) then the Terro feed stations are the way to go. The ants take the liquid back to their nests. They don't avoid the liquid because it doesn't kill immediately. I believe that the mode of action is that it interrupts the metabolism or life cycle of the ants. So the workers take it back to the queens (who get fed first) and the process eventually kills off the colony.

However, the colony may be huge or part of satellite colonies. In that case, the killing off process can take 2-3 weeks if there are distances involved. So you need to keep replenishing the liquid Terro or setting additional traps.

For those of you who like real action without spraying, there is a product called "Dead Fast." It is like a 2" piece of chalk in a covered dispenser (like a piece of chalk dispensed by a lipstick holder) Anyway, you draw 2-3 inch lines along or across ant paths ... just a little. Then you sit back and watch ... nothing happens ... the ants just walk right over the chalk marks. So you leave and come back later and there are no ants, so they must have all left ... but wait ... those are not dozens or hundreds of specks of grit all around the chalk marks.

Read the directions carefully for the Dead Fast. I don't know what it is but it sure works on roaches also. In your stores with bug sprays and traps and such.

hey guys all of your advice worked Fantastic! i got the traps! turns out we had them in with our other ant killing supplies! we usually get he huge Carpenter ants that make the crunch when you smush them EWWWW! the Drowning worked the best! it was cool to see them all float up and lose grip and spin through the water! hahahah. now its ant free! the cattleya was kinda shriveled before the soak and now the P-bulbs are so fat and thick! its even more beautiful now!

awesome!!!

SO glad i found this!
 

I noticed a crazy army of ants last week when I was watering my Cattleya....I started using Terro traps immediately, but they were pretty stubborn....They started the "death march " to feed on the Terro, but I only saw them one day (unusual as it usually last at least a few days)....I let the plant sit outside all week and watered again today -- well, they were not gone...so, they are drowning in a 5 gallon bucket of water with a dash of dish soap and I write this post!

I was super glad to see this post! Hopefully in an hour or so, this issue will be resolved!!

:biggrin:
Thanks,
Jared

aahahahahah those little things sting veryyyy slight and only occasionally and i wud think they nourish the orchids through their wastes? is the orchid bothered? or is it u?

As you guys have seen, orchids tend to attract ants.

Some orchids take this relationship to the extreme. One such orchid are Coryanthes spp.

Many genus are either excreting sap to attract ants as protection (oncidiums, catts…) or event providing housing (myrmecophylla to name one…) with some sugar excretion to feed them or even depends on them for pollination (Leporella fimbriata).

I don't see the issue if they don't raise an aphid colony for their own. Now if you don't want them to install themselves in pots, simple means will get them out without killing them, as they have a role. Sugar ants eat on honeydew, sap, nectar, but even more on insects they collect, dead animals they find by chance. So they are beneficial as long as they don't raise aphids on the orchids.

You can repel them easily with lemon slices, bits of hot peppers, vinegar. And no chemicals in sight. :)

Ants will turn your media very acidic and will kill your orchids as the roots rot out. Plants like Coryanthes, which have a symbiotic relationship with ant colonies, often prefer very acidic media for the same reason. I usually drown the ants in a bucket of water if I see they have invaded. You definitely want the colonies out of your pots ASAP. A few ants here and there collecting the sugar from new growths is no problem though.

how will the acidity build up if ur drenching wen u water???and wont the ants fet fed up and move out wit floods being so often?

They also farm scale .

Ants are pretty good at building structures and modifying their environment, just like people. You would be surprised at how much they will alter orchid media in a pot. They don't like to be drenched and are pretty good at creating a home where they stay dry.

ohhh i was being specific to the lil sugar ants...their home is in a lil pouch looks like cobweb(if is d same species of ants) other ants are disastrous yes

Ants will eventually kill the orchid. They take what they find out in the envirnment and after chewing it up, grow fungus' and mold on which they feed. Terro Ant baits are wonderful. The workers take it back to the nest and feed every one of their relatives which kills the entire colony. Queens especially. The media we palnt our orchids in makes a great garden environment for their gardens of slime molds and fungus. So if you se them around, beware. I lost two bonsai from inattention to ants. One was a 60 year old beauty, and the other was a very nice japanese maple. So get rid of the nasty things as soon as you can.

Hi Orchid Friends.

Though this comment is a bit late, I would like to add my version.

Ants do no harm to my orchids, and I even like them :) to colonise a pot or basket because no bugs
will settle close to ants.

So, if you grow orchids in a garden or in a greenhouse, you might just let the ants in peace.
If you grow in your home, that's another matter altogether ...

Regards,
Manfred.

imo there's no point using oil or any system like that. go to your local home improvement store and walk straight to the big guns. the pesticides. it may contribute to the deminishing bee population but your orchd will be as beautiful as ever

I posted this originally because eventually I had to bring my plants in for the winter so yeah the ants had to go! They are a staple in the growing area every summer but they have got to go before I bring them in. The last thing I need is a house full of ants. The Terro traps are the best thing ever! They love the stuff and then they are gone very shortly. The ants are also one of the reasons I now grow in lava rock they come around still and I don't mind that but they do not build colonies as they did In the plant mentioned my first post, grown in bark.

I always find it interesting how really old threads come back to life it's really cool! I forgot I even posted it :D

idon't know much about threads comming back to life. i've hardly used this site since i got it over a year ago i may have posted twice