We’re currently dealing with an ant infestation here at Chez Whatsit, and so I’ve been pondering many ant-related questions of late. Here they are; feel free to answer as many or as few as you like.
-
The exterminator who came over here told us we have pharoah ants. Are these particularly hard to get rid of or particularly dangerous in any way? The guy didn’t seem concerned, but then, I think he was the type of guy who wouldn’t seem concerned if a flamingo fell dead out of the sky and smashed in his windshield. For the record, his treatment of choice was to use this gooey bait stuff that came out of what looked like a pastry funnel all around anywhere I said I’d seen ants.
-
The way I understand it, ants have worker drones, a queen, and a bunch of males who hang around fertilizing the queen. The drones are female and sterile. Am I right? And if so, where do the queens come from? A democratic vote? One of the sterile females kills off the old queen? Or what?
-
Ants follow scent trails, so how do they find new food sources? I mean, if I leave a cup of key lime flavored yogurt (just to use a random example) on the coffee table, there will be ants in it within two hours. How does this happen? There was no pre-existing scent trail and yet the ants find it anyway. Are there scout ants that just go around looking for new food, and if so, are these scout ants specially designated, or can they just be any old ants?
-
Why do ants seem to like clean laundry? Is there something in there that attracts them?
-
Sort of related to 4), are ants attracted to smell, or do they just randomly happen to run across sweet food and then make use of it?
Thanks for any and all help you can provide.
Just me again, turning email notification on. You know, in case anyone has an answer for me… blinks hopefully
I can’t really tell you much about any of your questions except #2:
Different species of ants have different ways of making the colony work. In general, the various kinds of ants we see here in the States organize themselves like this: there is a Queen, and she is not elected. She lays all the eggs. All the workers and soldiers and other sub-castes are non-fertile females. In general, there are no “kept males” in the colony at all.
When the colony approaches the end of its life-cycle, or just annually in some species, the queen will produce some special offspring: fertile males, and fertile females. These new creations will have wings. When these special offspring are mature, they will go to the surface and engage in “mating flights”, where the males and females seek one another out. They will mate in midair (unfortunately, I can’t remember if the female will customarily mate with just one male, or several males) and fall to the ground. After mating, the male will die. The female will lose her wings, dig into the ground wherever she winds up, and begin to lay her eggs. And the cycle continues.
Pharaoh Ants. They do sound relatively harmless, but I hate ants with a passion. Only hate house centipedes more.
Just realized, I can tell you something about #3 as well: yes, there are “scouts”, but I don’t believe they’re designated or anything; basically, any ant who’s not already engaged in doing something else, like gathering food already discovered or caring for eggs or whatever, goes out and looks for food. When an ant finds a food source, it will dash back to the colony. On the way home, it leaves a chemical scent trail. Other ants can then follow that trail to the food source. And, as they return to the colony, they too leave “scent trails”, until there’s pretty much a lighted Interstate highway for the ants to follow to the food.