Flying ant day
In the pest control business, just like many different trades, we see trends in the highs and lows of demand, but there are two periods in the calendar that fill us pesties with dread. One of these, is the first is weekend in December when the public venture up into the loft for the Christmas decorations only to discover that they’ve got visitors of the furry kind, and the second one, is flying ant day.
What is flying ant day?
Flying Ant Day isn’t some strange National Day of Celebration, in fact for many people it’s the total opposite of a celebration, and it gets its name from the phenomenon where millions of winged black garden ants, take to the air in what is a nuptial flight all at once.
We get numerous phone calls everytime this happens because there isn’t just one Flying Ant Day but there are several; these nuptial flights occur throughout July and August.
Why do ants fly?
Flying Ant Day is caused by unfertilised Queens and the males from common black garden ant colonies; these choose a warm and calm day, usually after a period of rain so the grounds soft, in which to take off and search out a mate, once mated the Queens shed their wings and the males will die off.
The purpose of flight is to take the Queen away from her birth colony so that she can find a new place in which to set up and build her very own ant colony.
Why do flying ants all appear at once?
The ants come out as two groups; the unfertilised Queen ants and the male ants and they emerge all at the same time to maximise the chance of meeting up and mating but also to overwhelm any predators.
Lots of animals do this and you’ll notice on Flying Ant Day some birds go mad, chasing and feeding on the bigger ants, but they can’t get them all so the chance of success is so much higher.
Do flying ants bite?
Flying ants whether male or female are also known as alates and their only interest is hooking up, getting it done (in fact the poor old male ants die just after mating) and then getting rid of those pesky wings so they can move underground and start building a brand-new colony of ants.
So no, they don’t bite despite what some people say. The jaws of the black garden ant aren’t really powerful enough to puncture our skin; you can feel a pinch but they don’t actually bite us, unlike the red ants that you find in the garden: now they can bite!
Should I kill the ants if I see them?
No, please don’t do that, ants are really beneficial in the garden and have an important role to play in our gardens, for instance they predate other more harmful insects and they help create fertile soil by spreading nutrients.
Personally as a pest controller I’m against killing anything unless it poses a hazard to us, yes certainly you don’t want ants inside the house as they can spread germs and occasionally its necessary to treat nests outside, but if its ant nests in the lawn, just brush the ant hills down and let them get on with it.
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