No, just those teeny-weeny little ones that you can barely see; but when a bunch attack your foot, it really gets your attention fast ! I was wearing those ugly sandal things and the ants were right inside of the shoe. I hurried over and stuck my leg into the swimming pool and brushed them off that way, in the water, which also helped with the burning in my foot and leg.
Fire ants are teeny-weeny, too. If you start to get blisters where they bit you, they were probably fire ants. My son knelt in a hill of them while working on a car. He had a lot of bites on his legs. They turned into big blisters, then sores. It took them months to heal.
My sons liked to test the ants when we lived in Georgia. They would run through the hills kicking as they went to see if the ants could get them. I would stir up the hills, get them riled, then stray them with starting fluid and toss a match. Eventually we bought some hormone/pheromone-based bait that seemed to diminish their numbers without toxins.
I have little blisters all up and down my left leg and on the top of my foot, @Shirley Martin ; so maybe they are fire ants. I thought fire ants were the red ones, and these are tiny and black. Hopefully, these blisters do not take as long as the ones your son had. I have had them swarm me before and it healed up in a few days. Pouring rain again today, so the strawberry transplanting is probably not happening today.
Try popping the little blisters with a pin. It stops them from itching so much, and they dry up quicker. Then don't scratch them. Scratching can cause secondary infections and prolong healing. That's been my experience anyway. Your mileage may differ.
@Yvonne Smith , the fire ants we have here are real tiny and black. If they were as big as those big black ants we have, their bite would be deadly. Just few bites would kill a person. I once read that they have killed cows in Texas if the cow stumbles into a big hill of them. They have become a major problem here. There are three hills of them at the back of the field beside my house. Looking at them through my binoculars, one of them looks to be three feet wide and eight or ten inches high. I asked my son why he doesn't treat them with the fire ant poison we have. He said that it would be impossible to treat every hill there is here. All he can do is kill the ones in our yard. He does an ant patrol every few days. He said he found 18 hills back in the spring. I wouldn't open the blisters. That could let in bacteria. My advice; put cortisone cream on them three or four times a day. If you can take it, take some Benadryl tablets. The blisters are an allergic reaction. The Benadryl is an antihistamine. It will help stop the allergic reaction. That will be $2.98. I take cash or credit cards.
In this area, fire ants are definitely red. We usually have one or two "encounters" with them during the summer months, and the little pustules heal in a few days.
We have chiggers and my daughter and I seem to be allergic. They itch like heck and if we don't scratch, blisters form and keep getting bigger. I am gonna scratch them from now on. Except in public because a goodly number of bites are in the underwear area. We do have ant hills that grow large and the ants will run up our legs surprisingly fast. But I put DE on them and it seems to help.
Today, I was out and pruned back the tops from the black raspberries. They have been growing like crazy and are more like a blackberry than the red raspberry, and have thorns. The thorns are not as bad as blackberry thorns, but much more so than red raspberries have. I watch some YT videos and they said to prune back the tops around 4 feet tall and then the side branches will grow and they have more fruit than the long canes have. One video also said you can grow the pruned tops, so I will try planting some of them and see if they root and grow. It also said to try the leaves for raspberry leaf tea, so that it is the next project for the day today . Here is a picture of my black raspberry cuttings ready to be put in pots once the rain stops. We are actually getting some (much needed) rain, so I came back inside the house until the rain is over.
Our berries grow like weeds and even plant their tops themselves, left unchecked. They seem to pop up from roots traveling in the lawn and from bent over canes. I love our black raspberries. I have even made pies of them in good years. I want to try that cutting of the tops to get more branches and berries on the sides. Fortunately we have thornless blackberries.
I just checked my black currents and somebody, probably chickens, have eaten them all. Just looked out my south window and saw some lovely looking black raspberries and a deer with twin babies was doing hubby's pruning for him. I don't think deer eat black raspberries, only my grapes. This has been a bad year so far with all the rain. Beans did not come up, no hay can be put up yet. Squash is not happy. I think my corn is up high enough though. Do scare crows work on deer?
reportedly, castor oil works on deer. I have not tried it myself but it is said it is like an anti-cribbing spray and the deer and rodents don't like the taste.
I have rabbits chewing on the pine trim on my garage! Have for years. Cayenne pepper helps but I will try the castor oil on that too because it will last longer.