Frequently Asked Questions on Ants

These are the common questions we receive from our customers regarding ants. If you have a question not addressed in this list, please contact us.

How do I get rid of them?
The first weapon in your arsenal should be information. Hence, you will need the following information before deciding on a course of action:

Identify whether ants are workers or queens. If queens, simply collect and kill/relocate her as they are probably looking for homes off nuptual flight. Make sure to close off all entry points to eliminate future problems. If ants are workers, then try to track them to where they nest. This is to determine if they are foraging inside the house or actually are nesting there. This makes a huge difference as to which methods will be more successful than others.

Once you have this information. The following are various methods which may eliminate them.

If ants are nesting outside and only foraging for food or water inside, simply eliminate the food or water source. Either fix dripping faucets or secure food sources in sealed containers, cleaning cupboards, etc. Generally in these cases, it is easier to control the food source than to control the ants by killing them via various methods.

If ants are found to be nesting in the house structure:
Baiting. I have heard conflicting reports about how successful baiting is. Some have had complete success and others claimed none at all. Poisons or professional extermination. In the cases when ants are foraging. I have heard this can work well in conjunction with cutting off food supply. Frankly, I believe simply cutting off food supply is the main reason ants do not come back -- not the poison. If the ants are residing in the house, then poisons can work. I personally do not like the idea of filling my walls with a poison which I'll have to live with the rest of my life.
Attrition. This is the method I have used reasonably well. One simply puts out bait (poisoned or non-poison) to catch workers. Carpenter ant colonies usually only have workers which numbers in the thousands. Often I check my trap (a jar with bait in it) and simply kill, In my case, I capture and imprision until the colony dies by attrition. This method takes a lot of time, but it is the most environmentally friendly way to remove ants without resorting to removing walls. This has worked in my house two times now with carpenter ants. Eventually the queen is forced to leave the nest due starvation. All I know is that the colonies were evetually gone after I captured/killed a few hundred or thousand workers. I have heard of people using cinnamon around entry points. Also one can simply cultivate a lot of spiders here and there -- though this will not for certain work. If they are foraging, closing entry points physically (with caulk etc.) can help. Elimination of foraging rewards is best. If a colony lives in a house and doesn't yield to other methods, then the best and environmentally friendly way of removing them is simply to remove their nest from the house physically. Often this section is rotting or damp and will need to be replaced or repaired anyway because of weakening due weather or ants tunnelling. In these cases, removal is the most certain way to eliminate the colony since colony disruption is massive. If done properly, then a queen capture can be assured. In the case where colonies are looking for temporary nest due to flooding/fire etc., almost every normal method of removal fails simply because the number of colonies being dealt with is much greater than one. The best method for extermination is to actually provide better home(s) than your home for the refugee ants. By doing this, one simply encourages ants to move into the homes you've provided which are readily transportable. Once residence is established, one can remove them easily. Or you can destroy them. In effect, you are creating a friendly home trap where by you can simply remove the ants by removing their temporary homes. I have suggested to people to try cardboard boxes, with alternating layers of soil (for soil species) and corrogated cardboard (nice open homey spaces premade). When your ant refugee homes are created, bait them with something the ants like. Eventually if the refugees like your new homes, you will see columns of ants moving in with the whole brood and the queen. Once they are done moving in you can safely remove them knowing the whole colony is gone.

Why are ants coming into my home?
First one has to learn about ants to understand why they are coming into your house. Being able to identify whether the ant is a queen or a worker is extremely important, as well as identifying the precise reason(s) they are entering your house.

Ants come into houses for various reasons. Here's a list: Food Foraging (ants and humans like similiar foods). Ants particularly like sweets and humans usually have large supplies like meat, fat, etc. Water Foraging (often in times of drought ants will be found near faucets foraging for it to take back to the nest). New queens, from their nuptual flights, are often found in or around homes looking for new nesting sites. The colony is using your house for living quarters. Most often this is indicative of wet and decaying structures. Many species need some moisture in their nesting sites they usually will not inhabit dry housing structures. Flooding. Sometimes in extreme cases when ants homes are flooded, they will temporairly occupy human dwellings. This is usually temporary, but it can be extremely annoying.

How many different species of ant are there?
The most recent complete tabulation of ant species is that by Barry Bolton in his 1995 catalog of the ants of the world. He recognized 9563 names of ants described by science, each a distinct form. Since that publication, dozens of new species have been discovered by myrmecologists. The social insects give the most recent count at 10,213 ant species.

Since most of the ant species in studies of tropical areas are as yet unnamed, and new ones continue to be discovered even in relatively well-studied Japan, Europe and North America, myrmecologists estimate that there may be over 20,000 different kinds of ants inhabiting the earth."

How long for an egg to become an adult worker?
Based on my observations of Camponotus:
Embryonic period: 3-4 weeks
Larval period: 3-4 weeks
Pupal period: 3-6 weeks
Total: 9-14 weeks

Aphaenogaster fulva (American entomologist A. M. Fielde)
Embryonic period: 17-22 days
Larval period: 24-27 days
Pupal period: 13-22 days
Total: 54-71 days

Myrmica rubra (French entomologist C. Janet)
Embryonic period: 23-24 days
Larval period: 30-71 days
Pupal period: 18-22 days
Total: 71-117 days

Many species have no development from November to March and that is observed facts in nature. There is not a general number (even not in the same colony). It depends on many factors like:

1. It is different from species to species.
2. It depends on area, available food, and temperature.

Charles Janet and Adele Fielde were accomplished entomologists in their time (the late 1800's -- early 1900's, in France and the U.S., respectively). His research was mainly in insect anatomy and hers was in ant behavior."

Do ants get lost?
Some ants do get lost if their trail is messed up. In this case, they may never find the way home. However, if there is another trail from the same ant colony, then they will find their home.

There are various studies that some ants do use the sky to navigate. They use visual clues from large objects nearby to find their way to the nest (some desert species).

There are three kind of orientation:

1. Optical -- characteristic objects, light (e.g., rocks, plants, sun, and moon)
2. Positive/negative (phototaxis) -- the angle to the light (Menotaxis)
3. Gravity (Geomenotaxis) -- on a slanting surface ant can move in every angle to the gravity and can use the gravity attraction as a directional aide.
4. chemical as described above.

What do ants eat?
Ants like a mixture of honey and water, insects, and greases. They will eat almost anything except solid food. All food must be liquid. Not only food, ants need water. --Angelo

Ant larvae can consume solids unlike adult ants. I've seen ants move powered sugar. I think in general to actually consume food this is correct. Yes, ants do need water -- especially during a drought. That explains why they can be found around faucets, toilets, and sinks in houses during dry weather. They are foraging for water.

Some species, like the leaf-cutter ants (Atta and Acromyrmex), use leaves to produce fungi in their nests as a food source. Harvester ants collect seeds to store food. Some species even use aphids, as if they were their cows, for their juice from plants. Some species forage by going to various fruits and flowers to collect nectar, especially with the honey pot ants. There are some honey pot ants that stay in the colonies to act the container with their HUGE abdomens, and they can barely move!

Can ants talk/communicate?
Yes. Ants often hold meetings. When an ant wants to attract the attention of another ant, it taps that ant on the head with its antennas/feelers. Ants communicate by chemical, touch, sound, smell, and sight.

Ants also can relay sounds by tapping their body against a part of the nest. I believe some carpenters do this. The other methods involve jerking movements, sometimes one will pull another with its mandibles (I've personally observed this with workers wanting to move a queen from one place in nest to another).

Chemicals equally are important -- some release chemicals on finding food (laying a trail back to food source) -- others when they encounter a foreign nest.

Atta and Acromyrmex (leaf-cutters) have a stridulatory organ. A sharp scraper rubs against a file of transverse ridges. All acoustical alarms like stridulating or knocking always comes together with chemical alarms. They do not work by themselves, but as a compound together with the chemical alarm.

Ants are thought to communicate in a number of ways. This varies from species to species, some using all of them, others relying on one. Chemicals are used to relay messages as well as leave trails for other ants to follow. This can lead to freshly killed prey, a water source, nectar or other food source, insects which can be farmed such as aphids, other ants which can be friendly or hostile, or other insects and threats to the ants such as termites. Touch, sound, smell, and sight can also be used.

How long do ants generally live?
It depends on the species. According to UMI's handbook, a worker ant can live one to two years from birth.

Many ant workers live less than a year as adults. Pharaoh ant (Monomorium pharaonis) and ghost ant (Tapinoma melanocephalum) live only a few weeks. Queens of these species live less than a full year. Colonies of these two types are almost constantly producing new broods of queens, males, and workers to keep up with the mortality. By contrast, workers of many mound ants (Formica rufa and relatives) and cornfield ants (Lasius niger and relatives) live 1-3 or more years and their queens may live over ten years. These types produce queens and males only once a season. The record appears to be a queen cornfield ant caught just after mating, which went on to live 22 years in a lab colony, producing fertile eggs until the last few months of her life.

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