There’s a family of ants that’ve settled themselves in my upstairs bathroom. They don’t seem to be causing any harm, but I’m puzzled as to why they’re there in the first place.
I mean, if I were an ant, I’d want to be near a food source. “Food source” is a pretty expansive category, ant-wise, but even so I can’t think of what they could be finding to eat up there. The entire second story is, as far as I can tell, devoid of edibles. If they had a network of tunnels that reached downstairs, we’d have have seen them down there (they’re pretty large). They’re only in the bathroom-- mostly the inner room, the part with the shower and toilet. If it was on the first floor, I might have thought they were coming in from the outside, but I can’t see any reason they’d be up there out there, either.
I’m a pretty live-and-let-live person when it comes to bugs-- as long as they’re not biting me or stealing my food or causing damage, I don’t see a reason to be too fussed over them. I’m not really bothered about these ants. But I am perplexed.
I once had a conga-line of ants that stopped at a blob of toothpaste that persisted for a few days. Presumably not sugar or other sweetener, but calcium? fresh minty breath?
I think you may have answered your question with the phrase “pretty expansive”; soap, toothpaste, mold, carpet adhesive, paint, wood…and a water source is always a plus.
I’m reminded of the “when the log rolls over we’ll be dead” joke from my childhood. Seriously, we had them a month or so ago. Ms. P put down something they supposedly don’t like and they left; whether it was association or causation I don’t know.
If they’re large ants they’re carpenter ants which go after moisture in wood.
If they’re regular ants they will eventually branch out into every room in your house. when you set a piece of food down they will swarm it and leave a path for other ants to follow.
Yeah, I would be concerned they are carpenter ants, and it’s unlikely they are a harmless “family” sharing your space, but more likely a colony in your wall, chewing and branching-out to the rest of your home’s hidden wooden structure. You see the odd one here and there and I bet it is the tip of the iceberg - it’s probably so crowded in your wall the ones you are seeing are just stepping out for some fresh air. I would bring in an exterminator to take a look tout suite.
We had ants and they were all in one of the two bathrooms or in the kitchen, but by the radiators in all three rooms. This made me wonder whether they were using the pipes as roads. In any case a 50-50 mixture of sugar and borax spooned under the radiator seemed to dispatch them.
I had the same kind of mild infestation in my bathroom years ago in my previous house. (No, it was not eaten by ants.)
These were, as I had been advised before but just now looked it up (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lasius), “moisture ants” that eat decaying, wet wood, or the stuff that’s growing in the decaying wood, such as mold / mildew.
So these little ants may be attracted to your bathroom just because of the wet, rotting wood, regardless of any people food that might or might not be there.
There’s no such thing as a ‘small family of ants’. Ants live in colonies, and typically colonies have anywhere from 500 workers to millions. There are a few cases of small groups of ants living outside of colonies, such as a few living on a large food source, but ‘emergent’ collective behaviour, which is what colonies run on, requires large numbers. So any time you see an ant, you should probably assume that it’s a member of a colony.
If you ‘live and let live’, then that ant, if it finds anything useful and transportable, will take it back to the colony, leaving a pheromone trail behind. That will attract more ants, and once that food source is gone they will start milling about your home looking for more.
Ignoring ants is a good way to get lots more ants. They are the one creature I will kill whenever I find one in the house. I’d rather not have a highway of ants form in my house.
