Just now, I went out to check on the mail. I have not opened the mailbox since Saturday, since yesterdy was a holiday, but I most assuredly DID open it Saturday afternoon. It is a typical metal mail box on a wooden post just off my front porch. There is NO source of food in or around it.
When I opened it just now I literally recoiled in horror… the inside was literally SWARMING with thousands of tiny black ants with their white pupae/larvae/eggs/WHATEVER they are. THOUSANDS I TELL YOU. I grabbed the bug spray and doused the inside of the box and closed it tight They were already dead on contact.
BUT… what is causing this? Over the last 2 years, I have found the same type of swarms in the most unexpected places- in the Rubbermaid shed where I keep the lawnmower last year. same swarm, COVERING the mower, again, no foodsource, and this year, there was another in the space between the storm door and the aluminum door on the garage, this one not as big. Then, just last week I picked up a dog toy in the back yard and IT was infested with the ants and their eggs.
These places are not close together. The mailbox is on the north side of the house, toward the eastern side. The shed is on the west side of the house, at the back (south side) . The garage is in back of the house, south side, and the dog toy as well was out back.
What is causing these swarms in such odd places? It’s just bizarre. Until last year I didn’t have any more ants than the average persoin, but now… it’s an invasion.
They’re pretty industrious, I’m amazed at that. I have a soft spot for them, really.
Had a bunch colonize the mailbox once. You don’t have to spray them, though I can’t blame you. Just leave the door open, and they’ll haul all their young 'uns way back down the mailbox post to wherever. I was amazed to see they did it in half a day—that’s the effort of evacuating a city in a few hours. They want a dark spot, so if you disturb that, they’ll leave pronto.
Is there any construction, landscaping or changes in water flow nearby?
If you’re seeing the white young, then the ants are not out looking for food, but are starting a new colony or evacuating an old one. They do naturally set off to start new colonies periodically, but they’ll also respond to disturbances in their existing ones.
It could be a little like a problem with rats I once had. I managed a property that had permitted ivy to get hugely overgrown, so we had a rat problem. When I got rid of the ivy, it was the rest of the neighborhood that had the rat problem.
I’ve been noticing a similar problem with large ant colonies recently, but they’ve never been in odd spaces like that. I never noticed them in years past, but now they seem to be everywhere and as someone with a mild phobia of ant hills/infestations, it drives me crazy. I’ve lost count of the number of nests I’ve destroyed, and my right foot still has two sensitive sores from bites about a month ago.
Sounds like they’ve had their nest destroyed and here’s this nice dry dark place to start a new one. Not ideal really because it’s all open without space for tunnels and separate chambers. I wouldn’t think it’s a new nest because that usually starts with a new Queen. Some ants have more than one Queen and if the nest gets overcrowded one will get out with followers but I don’t think they take pupae with them.
We get the same thing, squatter ants trying to raise families in our mailbox. Usually I reach in, grab the mail without looking, start walking back to the house, then start my Oh-My-God-Bugs dance, until I realize it’s just ants.
The same thing happened in my mailbox. They were hauling their little babies around - kind of cool, really. I tried the live and let live approach until I started getting ants in my house along with the mail. Then out came the poison. Having roughly 50 million ant colonies on my property means never having to say I’m sorry for nuking your clan to death.
RedSwinglineOne… you made me laugh out loud with that comment… I could just picture all the little ants getting together to heave the flag up!
Nope, no construction or landscaping going in, but over last weekend we had a LOT of heavy rain. Dunno if that could have had something to do with it.
Today I had my puppy out in the front yard on a leash, and she started licking the bricks in the walk leading to my porch, which goes right past the mailbox in question. I took a closer look, and she was licking up… ants and their pupae. They were rushing willy-nilly along the bricks and the wooden frame that keeps them in place.
It just seems like there are WAY more than therehave ever been in the past.
It’s the rain. Every time we get a heavy rain here, ESPECIALLY if its been relatively dry for a while, the ants swarm for high ground - and unfortunately, that means in my house, my car, my mailbox It is usually temporary, but I still kill the ones that seem likely to take up residence.
I have had two separate infestations in my car this year. I few months back I noticed an ant trail on the rear door sill, and followed it up to some books my daughter left on the seat for a while. When I picked the book up, there was a decent size nest, eggs and all. I sprayed the crap out of them, and problem solved. Fast forward to last week. I noticed several of them coming up from the hole in the seat for the seat belt buckle. I placed an ant bait there, and didn’t see any more for a couple of days. But when I got out of work on the third day, there was a complete nest under the buckle. I had to spray again, and vacuum the mess up later. I suspect they are getting in through the trunk from the trash bags I have to haul to the landfill.
****For the last 2 yrs My house has been overcrowded with ants. They are everywhere. I had to have an exterminater come out 2 times, and spray the lawn and house. I mean saturate it. They were evn in my car. My guess is all of the rain too,
I once had them swarm up my chimney. They were an army a good foot wide and running from the patio inside for 10 feet then straight up the inside of the chimney. Not much to do at the top but come back down to the patio. I didn’t know what to do because killing them would make a horrible mess on the carpet. But within an hour they were down to a trickle of stragglers, then I never saw them again. Just following a bone-head lost leader, I guess.
I’ve got fire ants in my garden. This weekend I’m planning a serious extermination - I’m going to boil them out. These things cause brutal blisters - they are not good. The weirdest experience I had with them was a small moving ball of them I found in the water catchment. They were all just walking round and round. I scooped it out and pushed it open - there was a queen in the middle. They turn over the soil though - that’s about the only good thing about them.
It’s also possible something may have died in your mailbox or your tool shed (i.e. an insect), and the ants swarm it thinking “hey, there’s lots more where that came from!”
It is usually temporary, but I still kill the ones that seem likely to take up residence.