The state Department of Agriculture is surveying a Mililani neighborhood after six homes were confirmed to have little fire ant infestations.
"We’re out here … to do a survey of the larger neighborhood to see if there’s any more houses," Rob Curtiss, acting manager for the department’s pest control branch, said Friday. "We suspect that there’s already more houses we’re going to add to the list."
There are about 125 houses around the 95-1000 block of Auina Street in the Mililani Mauka neighborhood that the department has identified as high priority for the survey, which includes using peanut butter sticks to attract ants so they can be identified.
Janelle Saneishi, department spokeswoman, said the survey crews discovered the infestation was larger than anticipated, additionally covering the gully area behind the houses and over to the next set of houses across it.
"An infestation would be easily defined as any detectable population," Curtiss said. "So if we drop a bait and we find little fire ants, we can pretty safely say there is an infestation."
A plan to treat the area will be determined after additional surveys are conducted.
Homeowners can easily treat an infestation with various granular baits, such as Amdro, he said, depending on the size of the infested area.
Homeowners in the neighborhood say they have for years noticed the presence of what has now been determined to be little fire ants.
"They never really realized that they were a new invasive ant that was a problem. They just assumed they moved into my house and the ants just came with the house," Curtiss said.
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DETECTING LITTLE FIRE ANTS AT HOME
The state Department of Agriculture is encouraging homeowners to test their yards for little fire ants using these instructions:
» Place sticks with a thin layer of peanut butter every few feet in and around plants in your yard.
» Leave the sticks in place for an hour during the cool part of the day.
» Check the sticks to see if the ants are orange or red and very small.
» Seal the sticks in a bag, freeze them overnight to kill them, and mail or take to the department for identification.
» For more information, go to hdoa.hawaii.gov/pi/main/lfainfo.
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Joseph Lee was one such homeowner, saying the fire ants have been in his house for at least four years.
"I didn’t know that they were little fire ants; I thought they were just regular ants," he said, adding that he found the ants in his bathrooms and bedrooms, mainly on the first level of the house.
Over the years, he tried treatment products such as Raid, but none permanently eradicated the pests.
Little fire ants are an invasive species that are pale orange and measure one-sixteenth of an inch long. They move slowly, unlike the tropical fire ant, which was established in Hawaii many years ago.
"This ant creates what’s called a three-dimensional supercolony," Curtiss said. "And what that means is they’ll be nesting in a tree, on the ground, in your house, on your house, in your car — anywhere you can think of, they can set up a colony."
Known to sting and cause large, red welts, the pests can also cause blindness in pets. If a pet is stung in the eye, a cataract will form, and the pet will lose its vision.
"There’s a lot of problems with having little fire ants, so that’s why it’s important that we get rid of it as soon as we find it," Curtiss said.
Earlier this year an infestation was discovered in a Waimanalo gulch area between nurseries and on unleased state land. The locations are being treated every six weeks, a process that can take more than a year to conduct.
"Then once we stop finding ants, we continue surveying up to three years, and if after three years we never find any more ants, then we’ll be confident that we’ve eradicated it," Curtiss said.
