Ants attacked today! They took all my figs on 2 trees. I mean ate them all up. Nothing but nubs left. I had about 12 figs left on one tree and about 6 on another and got them all. All the protection over it didn't do a thing. They are the worst pests. They are organized. They have scouts that literally dropped from some nearby vines overhead onto the tree. I've seen them. This time I was too late. They swarmed the trees.

Oh those dirty little b*#@%%^^**!!!!   I am so sorry you lost your last figs to them - NOT FAIR!!!  

i have precious few figs left on my trees.. and it's raining again. my Kathleen's Black has one ripe figs yesterday. for some reason when it rains, i don't see ants. i got ants all over my Paradiso Gene which has huge open out in late figs. i'm sure i'll get wasps and flies tomorrow on them.

Sounds like war to me!  Too late now, but be prepared next year with ant traps, lines of chalk, tanglefoot, and anything else that stops or gets rid of them!  Sorry for your tragedy!

I'd be sticking those ant traps in those overhead vines if that's their entry way.  Kill the queen, and the colony will die.

Suzi

Next season you could remove overhead vines away from fig plants and apply tanglefoot.
Or enjoy ants once again.  ; )

They might have had some help (birds). I have seen ants completely eat a fig, but it too a few days.

I got rid of  a huge wasps nest inside my porch ceiling by trapping them with fly traps..they kept on glueing  and avoiding the trap and I kept moving it to their fly path and worked.. I wonder if similar traps would protect the tree if you know there may be ants... ( you know the sticky glue kind of trap.)  I am sorry, it must be a horrible to look a your trees. Hope they will recover for next year.

Vivian,

There was a period of time this summer when just about every day I went into the field, I stepped in, knelt in, stuck my hand in, etc. a fire ant pile.  The best thing is when those little bass turds sting you today, all of he insect bites you have from the past week starts itching again. Ahh, fun times! 

Hee hee. When I get some time I'm going to throw some DE on them.

I didn't think that DE worked for fire ants- please let me know if it does for you . I'll be using that then in FL. I hadn't tried it there because of what I'd read.

I recently heard cornmeal... when they eat the cornmeal, it expands within them and blocks them up.

James I have read that the worker RED ants don't eat solid food so the cornmeal would not be a good option.
I recently read this article listed below and there are a few alternatives. http://www.ces.ncsu.edu/chatham/ag/SustAg/fireants.html

We've been dousing small hills with buckets of boiling water- seems to keep small hills under control - but because some colonies can be very deep, bigger hills, boiling water will only kill the upper portion and may or may not get to the queen according to the size of the colony. Then they just pick up and move to another location in yard!

Ants that like sweet items are very very easy to kill the entire colony.   Take 1 cup of sugar and dissolve it in 1 cup of boiling water.  Add 1/4 -1/3 of a cup of 20 mule team borax.  Stir.  Near your figs take pieces of paper towel and folded it over on itself a few times until you have a piece a couple inches across and 1/4 inch thick.  Saturate it in the solution and go back an hour or two later and you will see the ants gorging....they take it back to the nest and queen and rest of the colony are dead in just a couple days.  It is non toxic to us and the environment and 100% lethal to ants....roaches.   You can rewet the paper towels as often as you like.  

I used to use baby powder because I received tons of it but never used it on my kids.  Worked great on ants.  They hate it.  The DE works for me, but whenever it rains, you have to do it over.  Not sure if they work on fire ants, but it is supposed to dehydrate them somehow. 

One word for you:  Tanglefoot

Go buy some. 

Figfinatic,
I admit I didn't read all the posts so I may be redundant. I can't find my glasses and the spares are in my car and it's rainy - yes I'm lazy today. But I think the ants must have had help from birds as they usually only eat a fig or 2 in my experience.
If you have that many ants I'd dp something like run away and hide as that would be a crap load of ants.
Tanglefoot may help next year and moving the way the ants accessed the trees should also, but if you have enough ants to eat 16 figs in a day -wow. What kind of ants are they? Big reds, little blacks?
Ants are fascinating and together make one of natures super organisms. Hopefully you won't wake up with a house full of the little buggers.
Good luck.

Would chickens eat them?  perhaps some chickens would do the trick or not?  Chickens get scorpions, why not those ants?  

Morning All! After living with fire ants (assuming that`s what you have) for years, my quick easy tip for reducing/repelling f. ants on fruit trees is to mix up a solution of Malathion or Sevin with some dish soap to help adhere, then spray the trunk(s) from ground level up to a couple of feet or so. This seems to keep f. ants from climbing up to the fruit. Any vines, weeds or other structures would need to be removed from contacting the fig tree, plus any twigs in contact with the soil or the ants would bypass the sprayed trunk. This might not work on a tree adjacent to a wall. Fire ants seem to be much more desperate during really hot dry weather .........they must have a more difficult time finding food during a drought. Since I cannot really even walk across the lawn without them getting me, a pair of inexpensive calf height black rubber boots intended for farm work keeps them at bay. Let me know if these tips seem to help, and good luck!!  

      I had some Dark Cornish chickens that would scratch at the fire ant mounds and eat the ant larva.They didn't eat the ants though.

perhaps you would have to train a new chick. cut a few up for them and introduce to them as new treat.. I have one out of my 6 chickens that I trained to eat slugs and she is crazy with them, while the others don't even bother looking.. it is gross, we have tons of slugs here.  I needed help as I do not do the poison.  It would be worth a try...I am very sorry - I am very alergic to those bites, I could not live /cohabit w them.

I had black ants that give a nasty bite.  I only got bit a couple times while clearing out everything.  Took out nearby invasive plants like some vines and stinky lantana.  Either the ants or touching the plants made me super itchy from head to toe.  Great ideas about chickens.  I would love to invite over some chickens to feast on ants and snails.  People should rent out their chickens.  Can't believe Tanglefoot isn't sold at my Home Depot, but I see lots of different forms of it sold on Amazon.   

You might double-check at Home Depot; I've purchased it this year at HD in Tucson.

You will never get chickens to eat ants as they strongly dislike the formic acid. Poultry science departments at several colleges have tried with little success. Very few things will eat ants. They are a marvel of nature.

I wonder if anteaters make good pets.