Laboratory tests with the imported fire ant, Solenopsis saevissima richteri Forel, showed that they would eat a wide variety of foods, including fats, proteins and carbohydrates. Dry foods, or foods that contained a minimum amount of liquid, showed little attractiveness. Field tests with individual imported fire ant colonies employing the dyed food technique indicated that various mixtures of vegetable or fish oils and flour, meals or dried blood were very attractive. Porous breakfast cereals impregnated with oils showed promise as baits which would be dry to handle. In small plot tests the following baits when combined with Kepone® (decachlorooctahydro-1,3,4-metheno-2H-cyclol,uta [ed] pentalen-2-one) gave more than 90% control of imported lire ants: peanut meal plus peanut oil, peanut oil and monoglycerides, peanut butter, flour pins soybean oil, cotton seed oil or peanut oil, whole wheat flour and peanut oil, and fish oil plus dried blood.