A bait blower, like this model which has been designed at Texas A&M University, can control fire ants in large areas like roadsides, parks, and nurseries.COLLEGE STATION – It’s the mother of all tools to combat fire ants, or at least it’s intimidating in how quickly and efficiently this machine can disperse granule bait in the ongoing war against fire ants.
Driving down the roadway at speeds of up to 10 mph and capable of throwing certain types of granules up to 100 feet, this fire ant bait blower is an effective tool in treating large areas, such as highway right-of-ways and urban areas.
“The concept was to mount this machine on a truck and cover a large area pretty fast,” says Dr. Charlie Coble, a retired agricultural engineering professor from Texas A&M University.
It was four years ago when Coble was challenged to design a machine that could treat large areas both quickly and efficiently. The Texas Department of Transportation provided funding for the project, calling for the development of a device capable of treating fire ant populations found along right-of-ways and rest stop areas.
“Roadside parks, city parks … you can do it fast,” he said. “Basically, it’s a large blower driven by a 16-horsepower gas engine. It has a feeder that feeds material into a fan, which gets into the air stream.”
Coble devised a way that the bait would be sucked into the air stream and distributed through an outlet system, dispersing the bait distances of between 50 feet and 100 feet.
“The entire machine is built on a skid so you can slide it into a pickup truck,” he said.
The system can be used in urban areas, Coble said, particularly inside cities.
“You can drive along a street and blow it out onto the yards of houses,” he said. “In nurseries, they grow plants and have fire ants. They can’t ship those plants out of state (if they have fire ants.) You can also drive the alleys between the rows of plants at nurseries and scatter the bait.”
The bait blower proto-type has been tested at Magnolia Gardens Nursery in Montgomery, Texas. At a speed of 10 mph, the blower can apply bait at a rate of 1 acre per minute. At a recent demonstration, approximately 50 acres were treated within two hours.
“It’s definitely an effective thing to use when you want to cover large areas,” Coble said.
Currently, the prototype is available for demonstration, but has not been produced for commercial use. To learn more about the bait blower, contact Dr. Bart Drees at (979) 845-5878 or via e-mail at b-drees@tamu.edu
