Carpenter Ant – Characteristics

(SCIENTIFIC NAME: Camponotus spp.)

Common name – Carpenter Ant – Scientific name – Camponotus spp
Black Carpenter Ant – Scientific name – Camponotus pennsylvanicus (DeGeer)
Red carpenter ant -Scientific Name –camponotus ferrugineus (Fab.)
Smaller Carpenter Ant – Scientific name – Camponotus nearcticus Emery

Class – Insecta
Family – Formicidae
Order – Hymenoptera
Length – 6 – 13 mm.
Size: Up to 5/8-inch long.
Metamorphosis – Complete
Recognition marks – Light red to brown or black; the common species are black. eyes well developed; antennae 12 – segmented’ without a club.
Reproduction: Sexual Food: various small arthropods, honeydew
Longevity: workers – 2 to 6 months; queens – 20 years
Posture: Dozens of eggs / day

Carpenter ants are in between one of the biggest ants found live in colonies in the United States. They are divided into different castes: workers, queens, and males.
Carpenter ants and their relatives form one of the largest groups of ants. They build nests and burrows and dead wood, logs and the timbers of buildings, where they may do considerable damage if allowed to spread.

It is estimated that there are around 18,000 species of ants of which 10,000 have already been described.

Some species are considered pests and others are extremely beneficial because they disperse seeds contributing to the reforestation of many ecosystems, in the forest; they promote the germination of seeds, because they remove the pulp of the fruit; and make a pruning of some plants promoting its growth; they exert an important role in the aeration of the soil, Incorporate organic matter to the earth making it fertile; are predators of different arthropods, many agricultural pests, as well as being predators of other species of ants.

The species that are considered pest ants are Acrobat ant Crematogaster spp, Black carpenter ant Camponotus pennsylvanicus – Cornfield ant Lasius alienus – Crazy ant Paratrechina longicornis –
Field ant Formica spp – Honey ant Prenolepis impairs – Larger yellow ant Acanthomyops interjectus – Little black ant Monomorium minimum

Odorous house ant Tapinoma sessile – Pavement ant Tetramorium caespitum – Pharaoh ant Monomorium pharaonis – Thief ant Solenopsis molesta.

What is an ant?

You have no doubt seen an ant. They are common insects, like butterflies, moths, beetles, and bees. Their bodies are divided into three parts: Head, Thorax, and Abdomen.

The Carpenter ant is polymorphic. The biggest carpenter workers can be huge and are called soldiers. These can be as large as 17mm of length and the smallest are 3mm. The species clearly vary in coloration being founded from yellow to a black color. They have only a knot in the waist and a circle of hair in the anal opening.

Queen – Winged male – Major worker – Minor worker

Carpenter ant

Carpenter ant worker

Typical non-carpenter ant worker

Winged carpenter ant

Winged termite

The body of an ant

Like all insects, ants have three main body parts: The head, Thorax, and Abdomen. On an ant’s head are all its important sense organs.
Most ants have two compound eyes. Each is made up of from 6 to 1,000 tiny individual eyes. These eyes help the ant see its nearby surroundings, as well as any moving objects. Some ants also have 3 extra simple eyes, called ocelli (oh –SELL – ee), on top of their heads. These eyes are especially sensitive to light and dark.

This combination of eyes gives many ants good vision. But other ants are totally blind. They find their way around by using their sharp senses of touch and smell.

This close up photograph of a carpenter ant shows the strong mandibles, as well as the large compound eyes and the three tiny ocelli located on top of the head.

Ants touch and smell things with their two long, thin antennae (an – TEN –ee). These are among the ant’s most important sense organs. With its antennae, an ant can detect flavors and sounds as well as odors. Ants also use their antennae in special ways to communicate with each other. The antennae have 9 to 13 tiny joints that allow them to bend and move easily. Ants are always waving their antennae in the air to pick up odors. They also tap them on objects or on the ground in order to identify something or to feel their way along.

An ant uses its front leg to clean its antenna.

On either side of an ant’s mouth are special jaws called mandibles(MAN – dih – b’ls). These jaws work almost like tongs or pincers. They usually have a jagged, sawtoothed surface.

Ants use their mandibles to pick up pieces of food, and whatever else they need to carry. They also use them as tools to dig nests in woodlands, and as weapons for fighting. For chewing their food, ants have another set of smaller jaws, called maxillae (mak-SIL – ee), just behind the mandibles.

The ant’s three pair of legs are connected to the thorax, the middle part of its body. Two tiny claws on the end of each leg help the ant to crawl upside down on the ceiling of a room or straight up a blade of tall grass. Sometimes the claws are also used to dig tunnels in the ground. In some special kinds of ants, two pairs of wings are also attached to the thorax.

The thorax is joined to the abdomen by a slender waist. This is a special body feature that allows the ant to bend easily when crawling through the narrow, twisted tunnels of its nest.

In the abdomen’s back section, or gaster, are two stomachs. The largest, called the crop, is a “community” stomach. The ant actually shares the food in this stomach with other ants in its community. As an ant collects food and eats it, the food is dissolved into a liquid and stored in the crop. When a fellow ant is hungry, it strokes the food–gathering ant’s head in a certain way with its antennae. The two ants then put their mouths together, and the liquid food passes from the gatherer to the hungry ant. In addition to the crop each ant has another, smaller, stomach in its gaster. This is the ant’s “personal” stomach.

Two ants sharing food

Ant or Termite?

Difference between Carpenter ants and termites

Carpenter ants and termites live in colonies excavating woods. That’s why some times people confused one for another. It is necessary to Know and separate one from another because there are different methods of control that are required.

Carpenter Ant – Carpenter Ants have colored dark bodies, their waists are narrow ,elbowed (bent) antennae, and if present, their hind wings are shorter than the front wings Carpenter ants are common and frequently are seen in the open.

Termites are light-colored, have no waist constriction, have straight antennae and, if present, wings are of equal length. Termites are much less common. They avoid light and are rarely seen outside of their colony.

Posted in Characteristics

Colonies

An individual ant is an insect with great strength and energy. But, ants cannot live as individuals. Their whole existence depends on the way they live as a group. This is why ants are called “social” insects. In order for one ant to survive, it must work together with other ants. Ants must help each other to find food, to take care of their young, and to defend the group from enemies. It takes many ants together, each doing their own special job, to keep the community alive.
A group of ants living together in this way is called a colony. Ant colonies may contain only a few dozen members or more than a million. In a typical colony there are usually three kind of individuals. These are: The Queen, many works ants and few females..

The queen – The reproduction function is carried out by the queen. She lives inside the anthill. The queen is the largest ant in the colony. She is usually several times as large as the workers. Her duty in the colony is to mate and to lay eggs. Her eggs contain all the future workers, males, soldiers, and new queens needed to keep the colony going. She loses the wings after her eggs are fertilized and during all her life she lays eggs.

The males – In the colony they have only one duty – mating with a queen and fertilizing her eggs. They do not work in the colony. They appear only when it is necessary to fertilize a new queen. During this time, thousands of males mate; after the fertilization, the males are not authorized to enter the anthill and generally die quickly.

The workers – Are the ants that we normally see. Tireless workers. They are all females, do not have wings and are sterile; still play all functions within the colony. Among these features include: excavation and cleaning of the nest, gathering food, also called foraging, feeding the larvae and queen (s), feeding other workers, defending the colony, etc. The workers live two to three months and during their whole life work towards the colony.

How do ant colonies get started?

A new colony is always formed by a queen that has hatched in an existing colony. At certain times of the year, the queen of an established colony lays eggs that develop into new young queens and males. After these reproductive ants grow to maturity, they are ready to mate. This usually happens during the warm summer months.

Top left- Winged Female
Top right – Winged Male
Bottom Left – Minor Worker
Bottom Middle – Intermediate Worker
Bottom Right – Major Worker (They are the ones that do most of the damages in woods. It has large mandibles and uses to tearing the woods. Making tunnels to live in).

The nest of carpenter ants

Most of the carpenter ants make their nests in dead wood, but can also make them in trunks of trees; however they do not feed on the wood. They also make their nests inside the houses, taking advantage of flaws in the structure .They can be found in the wooden joints and frames of doors. They can build secondary smaller nests, connected with the principal nest, which is bigger. They can be found inside electronic appliances.

Camponotus atriceps

Where to find Carpenter Ants nest

these ants build their nests mainly in the structure of wood. Hulls of trees, piles of wood, doors, windows, ceilings, cupboards, wooden cabinets and even electronics may shelter them. Despite the fact that they make their nests in wood, they do not feed on this material.

The main nests, with the presence of the queen are generally located in areas outside of houses, as in trees and in the garden. Nests parallels, linked to the main nest sites usually occur inside the houses, mainly associated with structures of wood as closets, ceilings, doors, windows and rodapés.

Posted in Uncategorized

What do the Carpenter Ants Eat?

Diet

“Carpenter ants do not feed on wood as many people think.”
They eat sweet juices from plants and insects. Carpenter ants have a long and exceptionally thin esophagus. (The food pipe) that impedes them from eating solid food. They are fed generally of sugar substances, eggs, meats, seeds, molasses, flyers, nectar, and fungus.

Preferred food: Honeydew, Insects and Sweets.

Finding food

Some ants have fussy feeding habits, but many will eat almost anything that is worth eating. They tear the food apart and carry the pieces back to their nest.

Food – carrying is very important to worker ants. Their main concern is feeding their queen and her young, so they have to get the food to them somehow.

A butterfly will make a good meal for these ants, but first it must be moved to the nest.

When one worker ant finds a good source of food, it returns to tell the others. They “talk” by rubbing their feelers together, and soon they all set off along a trail of scent left by the first scout.
Some ants avoid leaving scent trails in case they attract other insects.

Mouth to mouth

When worker ants have food for other workers, they feed them by a process called trophylaxis (It is the process of exchanging nutriments and other secretions in between the members of a colony.)

The hungry ant begs for food by tapping and stroking the other with its antennae. If it uses the right code, the provider produces a droplet of liquid food that is passed from mouth to mouth.

Ant nest mates share food by regurgitation. Two ants stand mouth to mouth, and one spits up food for the other. Food is shared among all members of a colony.

While some ants have become gardeners, others have taken up farming. One of their favorite foods is honey dew: a sweet, sticky fluid produced by sap – sucking bugs such as aphids.
Plant sap is mostly sugar and water, with just a little protein, so the aphids have to eat huge amounts to get the protein they need.

This means they swallow too much sugar and water, and they get rid of the surplus by squirting it out their back end as honeydew.

The ants “milk” the aphids by stroking them with their antennae to make them release the honeydew, then carry it back to the nest in their stomachs. Some ants go further than this, though. Even more amazingly, they collect aphid eggs.

Carpenter ants feed themselves with a great variety of substances. They need a balanced ration of carbohydrates and proteins. The proteins are especially needed by their queens to produce eggs, and by the larvae to grow.

Some foods that they use for their nutrition are: Dead insects, sweet substances that come off some plants and flowers, fruits, meats and fats, candies and juice, etc.

The favorite meal of the adult ants is the nectar that they obtain from other insects.
One particular case that occurs in the feeding of the carpenters ants is symbiosis. This process is a type of relationship in which two species are beneficiaries. The Carpenter ant drags the caterpillar of certain butterflies to its nest, and the ants fed on its juice; in the same way the caterpillars benefit from the relationship by obtaining their food from the young of the carpenters ants.

Aphids (here much enlarged) suck out the sap of plants. Ants feed on the honeydew they release.

Posted in Articles

Distribution of carpenter ants in USA

Carpenter ants are large ants that live in certain part of the world. They live in tunnels in tree branches.
Carpenter ants live in colonies and you can find Carpenter ants all over the world in temperate regions. Carpenter ants play a considerable role in forests as predators of leaf-eating insects.

Habitat

No matter where you walk – in a meadow, a garden, a forest or a city street- there is one creature you are almost sure to find: An ant. This insect is so common that most people barely notice it as it runs busily about. Ants seem always to be in motion. They build complicated nests with dozens of rooms and tunnels.

Carpenter ants can establish a nest inside a home.

Inside your home, they tend to nest in wet wood, Dead wood, trunks of trees and Electronics.
The Carpenter ants are the most common plague sights in the homes of northern USA. They live in colonies and the main colony must have a constant source of moisture to survive, so it is usually in the dead wood of the house. This includes dead branches, tree holes, and similar places. In interiors, the main colony will be in places with water leaks, or in very humid areas with little ventilation as basements and attics. Other colonies, may be located in hollow doors and empty spaces with enough moisture, as well as between the insulation that is in some penthouses. Ants leave traces between the colony and the main sub colonies Some Scouts can be seen touring these trails at night, when the colony is at its most active state. Sometimes traces can be found below ground along the roots of the trees.

Places Carpenter ants can establish their nest

• Places with moisture problems – Wall voids
• Flooring or sub flooring
• Attics (especially under roofing and insulation)
• Windows
• Ceilings
• Hollow doors
• Trash compactors
• Trees
• Landscape timbers
• Leaf litter
• Skylights
• Dishwashers
• Plumbing, pipe chases (kitchen/bath) OUTDOORS
• Stumps/ dead trees
• Woodpiles and fences
• Mulch beds
• Roof lines and gutters
• Windows and door frames
• Sheds and doghouses
• Debris piles
• Door kick plates
• Utility entrances (cable, electric, TV, telephone,)

Posted in Habitat

Carpenter Ants Interesting Facts

The ants extremely social. They work in an organized group.
Work: The ants are, in the majority, workers and work in assembly to serve the queen and to take care of the larvae. Beyond that, they collect food and take care of the maintenance of the anthill.

Force: Can lift 7 times its own weight. It is as if a man lifts a car with his teeth!
Queen: Mates only one time and stores the sperm that it will use until death. Then it pulls out the wings with its teeth and prepares-itself for egg laying.

In the road: The ants mark their journey with chemical substances. Through the sense of smell, the other workers follow it.

The truth is: The carpenter ant is now rarer; since their habitat is disappearing.
Nobody knows quite how many species of ants there are. Yet most scientists believe there are thousands of undiscovered species in tropical; forests. Since these forests are being destroyed very quickly, many of these species will probably disappear before we get a chance to find them.
Does this matter? The truth is that ants are an important part of the web of life on Earth. If parts of this web are destroyed, then eventually it will collapse.

Carpenter ants are very hygienic in their nests. They like to remove all deteriorated foods and deceased ants

Study confirms that ants use disinfectant

“Careful, the ants improve their chances of survival by collecting resin to chemically disinfect the ants’ nests.” It was announced by scientists of the University of Lausanne, in Switzerland.

These results show that the Carpenter ants capitalize the chemical defenses that have evolved in plants to protect themselves collectively against pathogens, they added.

In a statement later published by Swiss National Science Foundation, scientists from Lausanne – Michel Chapuisat, Philippe Christe, Pasqualina Magliano and Anne Oppliger – said that the discovery “shows the tremendous capacity of the social insects to take public health measures within a colony”
The ants are not the only species to use resin in this way. Many birds and some mammals also incorporate the material in their nests, the scientists added.

Curiosity

The ants are found in many children’s fables and stories of Western culture, representing work and cooperative efforts, as well as aggression and spirit of revenge. In parts of Africa, the ants are considered messengers of the gods. Some religions of the North American Indians, such as the Hopi, consider the ants to be the first inhabitants of the world.

Some cultures use stinging ants in ceremonies of initiation, as a test of resistance.

Posted in Facts

Urban Ant
Carpenter Ants (Camponotus rufipes)

In a day they are in the kitchen; another day, in the in the bathroom; one week later they are taking over the house. They get into delicate electronic gears, damage computers and we still know very little about them.
It is torture to live together with them; it will lead anyone to madness.

Carpenters Ants have caused serious damage to appliances by building their nests on it. They invade in addition, VCRs, refrigerators, televisions, ovens, microwaves, small central telephones (PABX), telephone devices, microcomputers and washing machines, clothes.

Nightmare with antennae

With the beginning of the summer comes an increase in the quantity of ants. They are considered by specialists to be the biggest urban pests of the season.

They seem harmless and usually circulate freely until someone notices their presence. Their preferential targets are the remains of food left in the kitchen, but they do hide anywhere, even inside the computer.

How to Manage

Discovering how to manage carpenter ants can be difficult. You can determine whether you have carpenter ants or termites by examining the damage done to wood. Termites also cover the nest with mud; the nest of carpenter ants will be clean of any mud or debris.

How to control carpenter ants?

The carpenters ants are big and they move quickly and at night.
They are extremely difficult to be controlled, therefore, their reduction will be noticed at about the tenth week of treatment.

The successful control of the carpenter ants needs certain skills, knowledge and experience. This control implies the treatment of so many colony satellites, and they are possible inside and out of the house. You must also seek and eliminate the colony mother. To have access to the mother colony can turn out to be difficult because it can be located on top of a tree or in a neighbor’s property.
In such cases professional services can be used for baiting carpenters ants, but it may have different results because of the affected eating habits of carpenters ants. If the conditions on your property (such as the presence of many trees, for example) constitute a risk for a reinvasion, professional service might be recommended to regular services to prevent new plague.

The inspection work must be guided for a period of between 12 and 20 hours, preferably during the night.

Methodologies of control

The control of ants is complicated, since these insects manage to have a very big distribution in the property, causing control difficulties. To improve the efficiency of treatments, another inspection will have to be made 10 to 20 days later.

PREVENTION

• These tips will help contain the invasion of carpenter ants:
• Seal openings and slits inside residences;
• Maintain food kept in containers well sealed;
• Maintain the environment free of food crumbs
• Store firewood away from your home and remove dead wood that may be close to the ground.
• Perform periodic cuts to your trees to avoid dead branches; trunks of dead trees must be removed. Keep your yard free of these potential homes for carpenters.
• Ensure that water leaks and roof leaks are repaired, and keep places that are susceptible to moisture in good condition.
• The rainwater that leaks should be directed away from homes, to prevent accumulation near the foundation.

Although carpenter ants are among the bigger species of ants, size is not a good way to identify the ant. Carpenter ants vary in size, even between one colony. A Pest control specialist in your City town can tell if you have an infestation of carpenter ants.

Cautions when hiring a Pest control specialist

• Request references on the company.
• Require “the permit of operation” emitted by the Office of the secretary of Health.
• Always ask for a price that is “closed”, diagnosis of the situation and places of implementation.
• Know what insecticide will be used, especially if there are children in the house or people that are allergic.

Posted in Management

(Camponotus rufipes)

The ants communicate with each other through chemical compounds called pheromones. For example, when a work ant finds food on the way to the anthill – she recognizes through points of reference and the position of the sun -where to leave chemical marks that other ants will follow. On other hand, an ant that is crushed leaves a pheromone of alarm that, if in a large concentration, causes the ants that are close by to attack.

Like other insects, ants smell with the antennas. Ants often communicate, or exchange messages, by touching antennae, or feelers, and pheromones that are present provide information on the state of hunger for each one; that can lead to trofalaxia, or regurgitating the food to the other. The queen produces a special pheromone that indicates to the workers to begin to create new queens.

Carpenter ants are social insects. None of the ants live on their own. They have nocturnal habits

Ants can communicate with each other by touching their feelers

The stinger is lacking in the workers of this species. However, they emit a strong odor of formic acid. The colonies may be very large. A typical colony may contain approximately 2,500 workers, a single queen, and some males.

SPECIAL CONDUCT

Carpenter ants are not aggressive but they can bite when handled.
The carpenter ant workers are more active at night as well as during the summer, when the weather is hot. They often leave the colony in the late afternoon and search for their food at night, returning over to the nest only in the early morning hours.

Carpenter ants dig their galleries in the wood grain following the softest parts. The hard parts are left intact and act as a wall to support the gallery. The ants keep their tunnels and their very own rooms. They remove notched wood; which they push out of the nest. These wastes accumulate and form small piles of sawdust under the entry holes of the nest, which provides an indication of the presence of ants. The dust particles are in the form of filaments. The small pile of waste can also contain soil particles, dead ants, pieces of insects or leftover food.

In the females, the antennas are formed from several articles and have a great mobility. The end of the antennas can be brought back until the front head. This allows rich antennae communication with other individuals. The workers antennaes are also used to touch the larvae at the time of the feeding and transport, as well as exploring potential sources of food. The ants often clean these olfactory and tactile bodies using small brushes located on their front legs.

The carpenter’s ants find the way of the nest by sight and sense of smell. They seem to have a better developed sense of sight than other ants and they use visual reference marks to orient themselves. They also create chemical tracks by marking their way using odorous substances called pheromones. This is why one sees them most of the time passing by again at the same place.

The full development of a colony of carpenter ants takes a few years. At the end of the first year, the Queen is surrounded by six to twelve small workers. During the second year, the number of workers increases and some major workers appear. New rooms are carved into wood to get the brood (eggs and larvae). In one room are the queen, her eggs and young larvae. In another one, we find older larvae that must be fed regularly. In a third, the cocoons are in a crowded jumble; prénymphes and nymphs do not feed. After a few years, the population of a single colony reaches 2000 or more. Some males and females are produced annually and soar in the spring.

A mature colony has a main nest and nest satellites (up to ten). The main nest, which shelters the queen, eggs and larvae of the first stage is always located near a source of moisture. The satellite nests may contain mature larvae and nymphs, as well as winged adults. In nature, a colony can occupy several trees, but only one shelters the queen and eggs. Nest satellites are connected to the main nest by tunnels dug in the ground by workers.

When the queen dies, the production of females ceases. The colony still remains for a year or two, here, the workers raise the remaining larvae. Gradually, the workers die. If the colony reaches below a certain critical number of workers, the settlement is completely disorganized and eventually disappears.

Human and ants

The ants are helpful because they can help exterminate harmful insects and reduce the gaseous state of the ground. On the other hand, they can become a pest when they invade the houses, gardens and fields under cultivation.

The “carpenter – ants” destroy the wood to make their nests.

Ant guests and “spongers”

Since ants are social insects and live in nests where there is both food and shelter, it is not surprising that a number of “guest” insects move with them. There are many of these ant guests. They are called myrmecophiles, meaning “ant- loving”.

Tiny crickets, cockroaches, beetles, fly larvae, and some spiders live with ants.

Carpenter Ants Enemies

Ants live by the millions all over world, so it is not surprising that plenty of animals eat them.
Many other small mammals, birds, lizards, insects, and spiders eat them when they get the chance. So ants need to defend themselves and each other.

Most people do not like ants. They see them as a nuisance, and in some countries they have good reason to think so.

Posted in Articles

Carpenter Ants Reproduction

The function of reproduction is performed by the queen and by males. The queen lives inside the anthill, is bigger than the other ants, loses her wings after fertilization and lays eggs during her whole life. The males appear only when it is necessary to fertilize a new queen, which happens during a flight involving thousands of winged females and males; after fertilization, males are not allowed to enter the anthill and generally they die quickly.

Development

The ants develop by complete metamorphoses, passing though a larvae state equivalent to the caterpillar of other insects, and the pupa state. The larvae do not have legs and are fed by the workers in a process called trophallaxis, in which the worker regurgitates foods that are swallowed and are already partially digested. The adults also distribute sustenance among themselves by this process. The larvae and pupa need a constant temperature to be developed and, therefore, are transferred to different locations, in accordance to their stage of development. The differentiation in castes is determined by the type of food that they receive in the different states of the larvae and the morphologic changes that characterize each caste appear abruptly.

Biological aspects of Carpenter ants

The ants can present colonies that are monogenic and polygenic.

The colonies can present thousands of workers. The reproduction occurs in the nuptial flight. Satellite colonies are common in all species where they present larvae of more advanced stages, pupae and, sometimes reproductive winged individuals.

Biological cycle:

Egg – larva – pupa – adult.
The colonies include 1 to 2 queens, many eggs, larvae and pupas. The anthill has three classes of adults: males, workers and queens.

Number of eggs per female: Could reach tens of thousands per colony. If they manage to work freely, they can build an anthill with around 300, 000.

Average life cycle of egg – adult: from 6 to 8 weeks after Oviparity (posture of eggs).

Period of incubation: The eggs grow inside the abdomen of the females for weeks or even months.

Preferred temperature: 25 ° C.

Longevity of adult females: average of 40 to 120 days. Males die after mating, the workers can live about 7 years and the queens can exceed 15 years. The anthill may be in use for 40 or more years.

The Life Cycle of a Colony

After the sprouting of the colony, the workers engage more and more in the search of food for the larvae and queen, so that the queen produces more eggs and thus produces more workers who will fed more larvae. This phase can last from one to several years. When the colony reaches its mature stage with a sufficient number of workers (variable according to the specie), the queen starts to lay eggs which emerge to become winged males and females. Then the adult genders depart for the nuptial flight out of the colony and again start the reproductive cycle. The cycles are repeated several times.

The mating game

When an ant is a few years old, the queen lays batches of eggs that develop into hundred of males and young queens. The males and the queens are bigger than the workers and they have wings.

The winged ants stay hidden in the nest, being fed by the workers until the big day arrives for their wedding flight. The weather has to be just right: usually a hot, damp, windless summer day.

When the worker ants are sure everything is perfect, they pour out of the nest, often attacking any small animals they run into.

Then they allow the winged ants to emerge. They mill around near nest entrances for while, then take off.
Since all the winged ants in the area take off on the same day, and even at the same time, the air is soon swarming with them.

Vast numbers are eaten by birds, but some manage to pair up on the ground and mate. The males die, after their job is done. But for the queen her task has just begun. She scuttles away; and since she has no more use for her wings, she breaks them off.

Then she slips into a crevice to hide while her eggs mature, and she prepares to start a new colony.

The queen’s brood

A young queen ant may stay hidden for months after mating. She may not even eat, but survives by recycling her powerful flight muscles.

Eventually she lays a few eggs in her refuge. When they hatch, she feeds the legless grubs with saliva enriched with reused muscle. These first grubs become tiny workers called nanitics. Which start gathering food and building the nest. From then on, the queen is just an egg-laying machine.

When her next batch of eggs hatches, the grubs are better fed by the food – gathering nanitics, so they grow into full – sized workers. They are dedicated to ensuring the survival of as many new adults as possible, so the whole colony is basically an ant – making factory.

As the colony grows, so does the nest. The workers build special chambers for incubating eggs. As the grubs hatch, the workers take them to sun- warmed nurseries near the top of the nest, helping them grow quickly. This is part of an ant’s life when it does all is grow because its maggotlike body is soft and stretchy. Within a week or so it stops feeding and becomes a pupa. During this phase its body is rebuilt into an adult ant. The adult emerges after another week to join the growing workforce.

Carpenter ant nest with the larvae and pupa

Most ant eggs develop into workers but some go on to become males and queen ants.

A male carpenter ant dies after mating with a queen.

A queen carpenter ant sheds her wings after mating.( She will simply rip them off)

Egg Machine

Each worker ant lives for only a few weeks, but a queen can live for 20 years or more. For most of that time she does nothing but lay eggs at a colossal rate.

Posted in reproduction

This type of ant was named the Carpenter ant because of its habit of living, excavating, and tunneling in wood. Some places have both the black carpenter and the red carpenter ant. Both have similar sizes and habits. If you have trees around your house or around your property, you may have seen carpenter ants in your house once or more. They are on average large ants, but in a single colony the size of a worker may vary. It is not necessarily a case of infestation if you find, per week, one or two Carpenter ants.

Ants are amazing creatures. A single ant is just a tiny insect, but since ants only live in highly organized societies they can work together in teams to achieve great things.

Ants have been around for at least 100 million years, which means that they survived the global catastrophe that killed off the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. Since then they have spread all over Earth, evolving (developing over long periods of time) into about 10,000 different species or kinds of ants. Today they are probably the most numerous creatures on the planet.

The ants are social insects that live together in colonies. They belong to the Hymenoptera order, the same group where the wasps and bees are. There are several families of bees and wasps; however all the ants are grouped in only one family, the Formicidae family.

To better understand the difference between each one of these ants and to be able to draw a plan of consistent action for their control, we need to know the biology and the behavior of the ants.

Posted in Introduction