# AHHHHH RATS!!!!



## bluescorpion (Sep 6, 2012)

Well right when I thought I was starting to get a handle on beekeeping, I checked my hives yesterday and noticed that 3 of my good hives were completely gone. 1 hive in particular was doing really well. It was stacked with 3 deeps and the bees seemed happy. I hadn't checked the hives in 3 days and within that 3 day period 3 hives completely bailed.

I'm currently using Italians and now I'm contemplating using another breed. Has anyone ever had this happen to them and if so, do you have better luck with a particular breed?

Thanks for the input gang. RATS!!!!!!! :doh:


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## enjambres (Jun 30, 2013)

The bees _absconded?_ Meaning no bees left behind, or did they swarm leaving some bees, brood and food behind? Did they just all die suddenly?

I've read that sometimes bees under severe pressure from pests (SHB and possibly varroa) might depart en masse, but three at once sounds bizarre.

Any chance these hives had human intervention - a bee thief, perhaps?

My girls are all formerly feral mutts, so I can't help with designer bee questions. I would be slaw-jawed with disbelief if I found that in my apiary.

Sorry to hear of your troubles!

Enjambres


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## rookie2531 (Jul 28, 2014)

3 good hives, That's all I have. I would be devastated. Do you think the type of colony would be to blame?


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## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

very strange. what did you find left behind in the hives?


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## biggraham610 (Jun 26, 2013)

squarepeg said:


> very strange. what did you find left behind in the hives?


X2....G......:scratch:


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## Brad Bee (Apr 15, 2013)

I hope you share more details, this is very interesting.

This time of year I am lucky to check my hives every 3 weeks and that's just a drive by. I surely haven't had any come up missing, but I do think I had one swarm lately.


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## bluescorpion (Sep 6, 2012)

I'm starting to think the bees swarmed out. I checked all three hives and noticed only a few bees in each hive. May have been robber bees cleaning out what was left. I didn't notice anything out of the ordinary three days prior to the bees leaving. It looked like they were doing pretty good. Especially the one with the 3 deeps(10 frames each). Got a lot of honey off the hive with the three deeps also. 

I've got to get back to them before the wax moths move in and destroy the frames. Depressing.....


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## biggraham610 (Jun 26, 2013)

Makes no sense, something had to happen. G


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## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

bluescorpion said:


> Got a lot of honey off the hive with the three deeps.....


were they other two pretty much empty? any capped brood left behind?

could it be that the smaller two collapsed earlier and the bigger one robbed them out and then collapsed?

if it was mites they would have all ended up in the big hive and may have crashed it.

uncap any brood left behind and pull it out to see if it is diseased, and look for mite frass in the empty brood comb.


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## Silverbackotter (Feb 23, 2013)

Sounds like what I have read about Colony collapse disorder?

Sorry


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## GLOCK (Dec 29, 2009)

Do you treat for VARROA? I had 2 hives do the same thing in SEPT. 2012 from VARROA .
How old are your hives?
If you don't treat I bet it's VARROA. 
They where some of my strongest hives that year .
VARROA happens fast.


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## NorCal Apiaries (Apr 1, 2013)

I've learned that if you remove/disturb too much burr comb, the bees will abscond.


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## bluescorpion (Sep 6, 2012)

GLOCK said:


> Do you treat for VARROA? I had 2 hives do the same thing in SEPT. 2012 from VARROA .
> How old are your hives?
> If you don't treat I bet it's VARROA.
> They where some of my strongest hives that year .
> VARROA happens fast.



I didn't see any signs of mites but I may have missed something. I'm going to break the empty hives down later on today and do a closer inspection. In my neck of the woods wax moths and hive beetles have been rampant the past few years so I'm sure the wax moths have come in and had a field day by now. This is my fourth year as a beekeeper and I was up to 6 hives. I've been waiting till around late September and treating the hives with essential oils for mite control. Seemed to work fine till this week.


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## tommyt (Aug 7, 2010)

Ants 
I'm betting you have them 

Go out at night with flashlight 

I had it happen the bees absconded over night 
I went back the next night to find them sob's 
Destroying another colony 
It was a parade from the ant hill right to the hive and back 
They are out in force after dark


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## bluescorpion (Sep 6, 2012)

tommyt said:


> Ants
> I'm betting you have them
> 
> Go out at night with flashlight
> ...



You know that is an interesting point!!!! I have noticed ants during the day but just brushed them off and kept going. This is also the first year that I have not used anything on the ground underneath, and around the hive. I normally use denatured earth to keep the crawlers away. Just didn't think about it this year.


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## FlowerPlanter (Aug 3, 2011)

Post pictures of any new empty brood comb that is yellow on the edges with brown patch inside. And pictures of capped brood. If there is any.

Was there any capped brood left?
Any honey or pollen stores left?
Did you feed HBH or EOs?


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## bluescorpion (Sep 6, 2012)

Ok gang. I was able to get inside the hives and there was no brood, no honey, NUFFIN!!! I took the frames and put them in the freezer because wax moths had already started to move in. I noticed in the bottom of each hive that there was, what appeared to be, cappings that were chewed up. I noticed on some of the frames also that the tops of the cells looked as if they had been chewed around the edges. 

I'll try to get some pictures after the frames are in the freezer for a day or so to kill the wax moth. Got dark on me quick.


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## wcubed (Aug 24, 2008)

Sounds like classic abscond for lack of field forage. 
Walt


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## Bob J (Feb 25, 2013)

bluescorpion said:


> Ok gang. I was able to get inside the hives and there was no brood, no honey, NUFFIN!!! I took the frames and put them in the freezer because wax moths had already started to move in. I noticed in the bottom of each hive that there was, what appeared to be, cappings that were chewed up. I noticed on some of the frames also that the tops of the cells looked as if they had been chewed around the edges.
> 
> I'll try to get some pictures after the frames are in the freezer for a day or so to kill the wax moth. Got dark on me quick.


Ragged chewed cells and caps is a pretty sure sign it was robbed out.....


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## bluescorpion (Sep 6, 2012)

Hi All

I was able to look closer at more of the frames after the freezer took care of the wax moths. I noticed that some of the frames still had what appeared to be pollen packed about halfway inside of the cells.


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## bluescorpion (Sep 6, 2012)

Here's a few more pics from some other frame.


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## Estell Tabor (Aug 5, 2014)

it looks like the hive had been robbed to me.


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## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

i think i see a little frass in pic #2, and the comb looks chewed up in the others. no capped brood in any of them?


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## bluescorpion (Sep 6, 2012)

Nothing in the first two. I'm currently going through the third and so far it looks the same. Just a few frames that look like pollen is half way packed in. I've place denatured earth around the bottom of the last few hives so I'll see how they do over the next few days. I'm starting to think that there may be some validity to the "ANT" theory.


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## tommyt (Aug 7, 2010)

It ants 
They ate the Brood ( you stated chewed comb) that's a sure sign
The Honey was robbed out by BEEs ( also stated chewed comb)

That's why there was still some pollen 
Everything else was robbed 
I don't know bees to or ants to Rob pollen 

Ants are Mean and ravenous


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## bluescorpion (Sep 6, 2012)

tommyt said:


> It ants
> They ate the Brood ( you stated chewed comb) that's a sure sign
> The Honey was robbed out by BEEs ( also stated chewed comb)
> 
> ...


I checked the third hive and looks exactly the same. Pollen and nothing else. Well this is a hard lesson learned. Treat the ground underneath your hives with something and "Don't Neglect It". In the past I treated the ground but this year I just wasn't thinking about it. Lost three really good hives. Hope everyone else uses this as a lesson!!!!!!!!

Thanks to everyone for your help......


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## BeeGhost (May 7, 2011)

NorCal Apiaries said:


> I've learned that if you remove/disturb too much burr comb, the bees will abscond.


Ive never ever heard of this. I find it really hard to believe as I destroy the burr comb between boxes when ever I inspect them and have not had them abscond.............ever, due to that.

I have had ants pester the heck out of splits, but I ended up spraying and killing the ants, problem solved for a couple months.

Ive had hives completely abscond due to heavy varroa overload. And this looks like a case of that to me.


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## Lburou (May 13, 2012)

I feel your pain. 

One thing I would look for on the bottom side of the brood cells is white spots (mite feces), it might give you an idea of the mite pressure in the hives. Do you see white spots in the brood cells?

wcubed, would you please elaborate on the causes of absconding. How does one know they left for greener pastures? Why would all three colonies disappear at the same time? TIA


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## wcubed (Aug 24, 2008)

Lb,
You might not remember the "disappearing disease" of S. Ala. in '02. Whole outyards went away. A late freeze took out the tree sources in the buildup period. Our trees here were not developed to the point of vulnerability. We saw more early supersedures than normal, but no absconds. That problem was close enough that I did my own independent investigation. Concluded it was absconds. The experts never did figure it out.

The three colonies in question on this thread were exposed to the same environmental conditions by being at the same location. At the time of the Ala. thing, a beek about 40 miles southeast of me lost a few to abscond. 30%, I believe. That's where I went to check it out. His indications were exactly what I would expect for an abscond. So, this case does not have to be an all or nothing thing.

He had a handful of bees left and no queen, some capped and no larval brood. The handful of bees could easily either be just emerged or in the field when the abscond left.
While on the queen subject, in the CCD case the queen is present.

The absence of capped brood does not negate the possibility of abscond. It was a while since the last inspection. Am not sure capped brood need broodnest temps to develope. Have some observations to the contrary. And we have no data on in-hive temps during this summer period. Also, don't know about the effects of the ant infestation. That could have come later.

Walt


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## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

i'm not sure what the op meant by 'didn't notice anything out of the ordinary three days prior to the bees leaving.'

if that means he saw bees coming and going from the hives there's no way to know when they absconded as he could have been observing the robbing aftermath.

generally it's been a good year for forage in the southeast so unless winston salem had some wacky conditions i wonder about the lack of field forage being the culprit.

i've no experience with ants, but finding the two completely empty and the third with lots of honey makes me suspect the two empty ones collapsed first and got robbed out by the third. 

if those brood combs are loaded down with mite feces my money is on a sequential collapse with all of the mites ending up in the third which caused them to bail, and as walt suggests the ants may have come along after the fact and cleaned up the brood.

bluescorpion, i tried to find a good photo of mite feces (frass) but couldn't. did you find a lot of it in the brood combs? does anyone know if the ants would clean that out too?

interesting case.


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## bluescorpion (Sep 6, 2012)

squarepeg said:


> bluescorpion, i tried to find a good photo of mite feces (frass) but couldn't. did you find a lot of it in the brood combs? does anyone know if the ants would clean that out too?
> 
> interesting case.


Hey gang I took a few more pics today . I tried to get as closeup of a shot as I could without blurring the shot. There doesn't seem to be anything in any of the frames that I can see. Does anyone else see something that I might have missed?


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## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

nothing jumps out at me in those bluescorpion.

were these package starts this year? when was the last time you saw brood?


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## bluescorpion (Sep 6, 2012)

squarepeg said:


> nothing jumps out at me in those bluescorpion.
> 
> were these package starts this year? when was the last time you saw brood?


I've had these same hives for about 3 years now and they have been doing pretty good up to this point. I'm going to have to get new packages this spring to replace these hives. They had brood about 2 months ago and then I noticed that the brood was less and less. I thought about re-queening but figured I'd give it a little more time and see if the queen was just taking a break.


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## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

understood blue.

sorry about the loss, at least you'll have some comb to start over with.


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## dsegrest (May 15, 2014)

Is there still honey in the hives?


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## bluescorpion (Sep 6, 2012)

dsegrest said:


> Is there still honey in the hives?



Nope. No honey at all....


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## Santa Caras (Aug 14, 2013)

tommyt said:


> Ants
> I'm betting you have them
> 
> Go out at night with flashlight
> ...


+100....will rob and kill everything. 4-5 ants will attack one bee and then another couple of ants will tear its wings off thus killing the bee. I've had it happen too. Tommy has it right....check at night and then get some kind of grease barrier tween the ground and the hive. Once they find a way in...they will come back every night till that hive is dead. Doesnt take long either. 1-3 nights is all thats needed for ants to kill a hive.


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## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

i misunderstood about the honey in the big hive. i thought the 'got a lot of honey off' was recent, but now that i see that even the big hive was empty my theory about the sequential collapse in wrong. 

i have fire ants but they don't seem to bother the hives. i also have some tiny 'sugar' ants that sometimes go into the hives, but they haven't caused any problems.

what kind of ants can take down a colony?


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## bluescorpion (Sep 6, 2012)

Just wanted to follow up real quick. I was out the other night and remembered that I had left some wax near the empty hives that I had cleaned out. Here's what I found.


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## beepro (Dec 31, 2012)

Ants! Black carpenter ants.
They took out 2 strong hives on my first year of beekeeping during the early Fall when
the bees were building up for the winter. I found this forum afterward. Sad. But I have
learned a lot to not put any bee hives on top of an ant hill. They even came out during the
day time too. Bits and pieces of small shredded comb on the hive bottom everywhere.
Tommy was right.


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## kldreyer (Sep 8, 2009)

well, son of a gun. that sure sounds/looks like what happened to one of my good hives about a month ago. Bottom board covered with wingless corpses, and the surviving bees absconded and then returned. Ants have been terrible in the yard this spring/summer. Now I know. Thanks tommyt.


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## jbeshearse (Oct 7, 2009)

beepro said:


> Ants! Black carpenter ants.
> They took out 2 strong hives on my first year of beekeeping during the early Fall when
> the bees were building up for the winter. I found this forum afterward. Sad. But I have
> learned a lot to not put any bee hives on top of an ant hill. They even came out during the
> ...


It is pretty normal for me to have a colony of carpenter ants living between the telescoping cover and any inner cover that does not have a slot cut in it. The bees and the ants ignore each other. On the plus side, if a hive does die out, the ants tend to move in and protect the frames from wax moths and SHB. And yes, I am sure that the ants did not kill the hives but moved in afterward. Also I have used cinnamon on the top bars of my top bar hive to run the ants off. It worked great, too bad the bees absconded also.


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## Steve56Ace (Sep 5, 2014)

Were there bee wings in the bottom of the hive?


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## beepro (Dec 31, 2012)

Being my first year I don't have a telescope cover just a regular migratory cover.
The ants got in from the front entrance and any crevice they can find. There are thousands of
them attacking at the same time. I did not put any cinnamon powder on the hives or on the frame top either. 
The poor bees are all defenseless against them. Yes, there are wings and bee parts on the bottom of the hive too. 
This devastating incident is still very vivid in my mind as I took each hive apart to examine. I will never forget it!


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## bluescorpion (Sep 6, 2012)

This was a bitter lesson for me to learn. Normally I'm pretty good about treating the ground underneath my hives but this year I just didn't even think about it. Focused too much on queens, splits, mite maintenance, etc. I hope this thread helps others so they don't lose hives.

Thanks gang...... :lookout:


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## AstroBee (Jan 3, 2003)

Wouldn't there be a lot of dead bee parts on the bottom board if ants took these hives? I've never seen ants take a hive, so I'm just wondering.


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## bluescorpion (Sep 6, 2012)

I'm not sure if the ants actually come into the hives to kill or not. My theory is the ants came in droves and disturbed the hive enough that the queen packed up and left and took MOST of the hive with her. From there, the ants attacked what was left. Not sure though....

Maybe one of the more seasoned beekeepers might could answer that question better. :scratch:


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## bluescorpion (Sep 6, 2012)

The pictures that I posted showed wax that had a bit of honey still. I think the ants were after the honey and just took over.


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## dsegrest (May 15, 2014)

Hindsight is always 20-20. I have learned to keep a swarm lure about 200 feet from my hives just in case. That way I won't kill the bees with a vacuum cleaner. duhhh


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## AstroBee (Jan 3, 2003)

My guess is that this these hives absconded. The big question is why. I guess I'm not buying the ant story. I can't say that I've ever seen absconding induced by ants. We have several different types of ants here, including the black carpenter ants shown in the picture. The fact that you saw them on comb near the sight is certainly not conclusive of anything. If I leave comb unattended in any of my yards I will see the same thing. Ants are almost as resourceful as bees, so any unattended resource is going to be utilized. I have seen bees abscond from SHB pressure (unfortunately many times), and robbing pressure from nearby hives. Perhaps in other parts of the country ants can pose a bigger threat, but I've yet to see it happen in our region.


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## AstroBee (Jan 3, 2003)

dsegrest said:


> I have learned to keep a swarm lure about 200 feet from my hives just in case.


I've found absconding bees very hard to keep at the same location of the parent colony. Kind of makes sense, right? There is something that is causing undo stress/pressure on the colony to make it leave at a time of year that poses great risk to the colony. Seems like it wouldn't be a good strategy to stay within a small radius of the original colony (same stress/pressure). If all your neighbor's homes were all getting broken into and you eventually decided to move, would you consider buy a house in the same neighborhood?


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## Santa Caras (Aug 14, 2013)

AstroBee said:


> Wouldn't there be a lot of dead bee parts on the bottom board if ants took these hives? I've never seen ants take a hive, so I'm just wondering.


Yes...bee parts everywhere and pupa dragged out of their comb. Had this happen early summer where ants took out a nuc. It was def ants that did it. They tried attacking a 2nd nuc but I was ready for them on that one. Came out one evening to check on them (concerned about the ants at the time) and found thousands of ants massing under the hive stand. Knew at the word go they were going to climb and attack at some point so took I destroyed them with Raid. Great satisfaction in doing so!! Anyway...theres some pics of my hive that was killed by ants. Nasty nasty...I was disapointed as it was my first split I tried.


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## scorpionmain (Apr 17, 2012)

I had a hive abscond this year due to black carpenter ants.


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## grozzie2 (Jun 3, 2011)

In January, right after our worst cold snap of the winter, had a nice day and I walked thru the beeyard. Lots of activity at every hive, so I was confident all of the colonies had made it thru. The next day, one of them looked a little odd, so I popped the lid (I dont normally pop lids that early in the year) to look. Sure enough, the colony was dead, and the activity the day before was the other colonies robbing the dead hive. But it was a nice sunny day, about 10C outside, little bit of snow still on the ground, and the activity at the entrance looked just like the others, a few bees coming and going, lots of yellow stains showing up on what was left of the snow.

My conclusion from that. When the target colony is alive and defending, robbing does look like somewhat of a frenzy. But when the target colony has already died off, robbing out whats left in the frames, looks just like the normal coming and going from the hive. I'll have to get better at trying to notice if the bees are 'coming in light, going out heavy' to really see the difference.


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## bluescorpion (Sep 6, 2012)

So what do most seasoned beekeepers use underneath their hives to fight ants? I've used denatured earth in the past. (trying to be organic). Haven't had any problems till this year when I used NOTHING of course. :digging:


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## Santa Caras (Aug 14, 2013)

bluescorpion said:


> So what do most seasoned beekeepers use underneath their hives to fight ants? I've used denatured earth in the past. (trying to be organic). Haven't had any problems till this year when I used NOTHING of course. :digging:


Well I'm certainly not seasoned but what I did was....went to a single pole hive stand. I had basic saw horses before and by doing this it reduced the number of access for ants from 4 legs to 1. On that single pole I cut a 4"x4" hole in a metal pie pan and slipped it on facing downwards. (downwards so that rainwater would not fill up the pan) I then coated the underside of that pan with hvy axle grease. Ants climb pole, come to axle grease and turn around. TAAA-DAHH!
The D Earth wont do any good for ants. D earth is not a pesticide...it's basically ground up calcium and while it will kill SHB larva that drops on it by cuttin up the larva...doubt it'd kill ants.


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## bluescorpion (Sep 6, 2012)

Thanks for the tip Santas. I'll try the axel grease. That sounds like it may work better that the denatured earth.


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