In the case of ants, the classification into the beneficial or pest category is not entirely clear. In addition to their usefulness, they also have a few harmful and, above all, annoying properties - especially when thousands of them buzz out of the ground in a winged state.

The nuptial flight lasts only a few days

Table of Contents

Show all
  1. the essentials in brief
  2. Fight flying ants
  3. prevention
  4. Definition of flying ants
  5. Beneficial and pest properties
  6. Flying ants - garden species
  7. frequently asked Questions

    8. the essentials in brief

    • Flying ants are "normal" ants on their nuptial flight
    • With simple measures such as fly screens and no light when the window is open, you can prevent them from entering the house
    • The nuptial flight takes place in the summer
    • The males die after mating

    What to do against flying ants in the house or garden?

    If flying swarms of ants bother you, the easiest way is to tolerate them. Because the nuptial flight only lasts about 2 to 3 days and only once a year, so you will soon be in peace again. Instead of fighting the animals with great effort, you can just sit back and wait.

    Of course, not entirely without parallel defensive measures. The most effective methods are purely physical barriers that prevent flying ants from entering the house:

    • insect gauze: By covering your windows with insect screens, you prevent swarms of winged ants from entering the bedroom or living room. At first glance, this seems disproportionately complex for the few days of the nuptial flight - but if you don't want to be kept awake night after night by buzzing, stinging mosquitoes or surprised by other swarming insects during the rest of the summer, you'll also benefit in the long term.
    • Keep windows and doors closed: In the summer, of course, you don't want to do without airing as often as you would at some other time. But if it can be set up somehow - for example by investing in an air conditioning system or if the weather is not so hot, the windows and doors should remain closed during the ant flight times if possible.
    • Lights out: This measure also helps in general against invading flying insects: nocturnal beetles, moths, mosquitoes and also winged ants orientate themselves by light and are therefore strongly attracted to bright lighting in the house. If possible, do not leave lights on when windows or patio doors are open.
    • odor barriers: Lemon juice and smells of cloves, cinnamon, chili, lavender or bay leaves are repulsive for ants. The smell of coffee is also said to have a dispelling effect. For example, if you mix water with lemon juice, essential oils of the fragrances mentioned or strong espresso and fill the mixture into a water disperser, you can contain the flying bugs right on the spot.
    • vacuum cleaner: The vacuum cleaner can also be used to help against flying ants. A somewhat harsh method, but as a rule ants, even the winged ones, are very robust. Of course, what has to be considered is to close the suction pipe after the suction attack (e.g. with a cloth gag) and immediately empty the dust bag at a distance.
    • ant sprays: Commercially available ant sprays are only suitable for flying ants insofar as their active ingredient can be sprayed and therefore applied well to the pests in the air. The effect is usually there very quickly. However, the active ingredients are usually purely chemical and not only poisonous for flying ants, but also for other animals, including your pets.

    Prevent flying ants

    In order to prevent flying ants from developing in your garden and thus easily getting into the house, it makes sense to look out for ant nests beforehand and remove them. In addition, ants can of course become a nuisance before and after the flight phase of the sex animals with their nest building and their everyday work in the colony. Ant trails across the terrace and sometimes into the house are the most annoying things. If they set up their nests under terrace slabs, they can also lead to loosening of the pavement bed and sagging of the slabs due to undermining.

    If they come crawling into the house in large numbers, it is of course annoying and possibly harmful, because they can also decompose building material here.

    Ant Nest Disturb: If you constantly level an ant nest in the lawn or in your patio paving and water it with water, this gives the ants trouble without killing them unnecessarily. They have enough to do cleaning up their nest and less time to care for the brood.

    lime barriers: Substances with an alkaline effect such as chalk or garden lime (9.70€) also have an anti-ant effect.

    bait: You can also use bait to catch ants. The best lure is a bowl of slightly stale beer sweetened with a spoonful of honey or sugar. If you place this over an ant trail, the animals will be magically attracted by the sweet, fermenting smell. When trying to grab some of it, they fall in and drown.

    nematodes: Predatory nematodes are now recommended for many harmful insects. The predatory roundworms can also be used against ants by introducing them into the nests with irrigation water.

    relocate nest: In contrast to wasp nests, an ant nest can be relocated easily and without costly, professional help. All you need is a large terracotta flower pot with a drainage hole and some soil. That's how it works:

    1. Fill the terracotta pot about four-fifths full with (sandy) soil or wood shavings
    2. Place the pot near the ant nest, ideally directly above an ant trail
    3. Wait until the animals discover the warm potting soil and crawl in through the drainage hole. They will recognize an ideal breeding ground in the flower pot and resettle their colony there. You can tell that this has happened by the numerous white pupae in the pot.
    4. Once the move is complete, use a shovel to pick up the pot from below and transport it without it falling over, for example to a nearby grove. However, the location should be at least half a kilometer away so that the ants cannot find their way back to their original nest.

    Ant colonies can be relocated relatively easily

    baking powder: Baking powder or baking soda is an old household remedy against ants. Here, too, the effect is based on the alkaline effect: it causes contact burns in ants. However, the method is not particularly reliable, and it also causes the ants a very unpleasant death. The method can hardly be used against flying ants, at most by sticking the powder with a little water to the window and patio door frames during the flight phases. After the 2-3 day plague it can then be wiped off again.

    What are flying ants?

    Flying ants are sometimes mistaken for a separate species. Because they resemble stinging insects when they are winged, some may even have a vague fear that they might sting. But don't worry: flying ants are not dangerous. It is not a question of a special kind of ant, but only of the sexual animals in the ant colony. And they're annoying at best.

    background

    nuptial flight

    Young queens and males are winged in order to be as mobile as possible when looking for a partner. It is cheap to mate across states. This is very similar to other social insects, such as some wasp species.

    The swarming out of the sexual animals is also called “nuptial flight” in ants. It usually takes place in early or mid-summer. The young queens and males then gather together from colony to colony and start a veritable mating marathon. A young queen can be mated with by up to 40 males and stores the sperm in a sperm sac.

    After the nuptial flight, the swarming of ants is over: the males die immediately after completing their task, the young queens shed their wings again after use. The majority of the individuals in the ant colony, i.e. the workers, remain basically wingless.

    Go to the ant, lazy one; see their ways and learn!

    Ants - Diligent helpers and tiresome swarmers

    Ants are definitely classified as beneficial insects for the garden. They effectively help in pest control and maintaining ecological balance. Here is a small overview of the useful and harmful or disturbing properties of ants:

    beneficial properties pest properties
    They sometimes eat pests such as leaf beetle larvae or moth caterpillars, as well as snail eggs Defend aphids against predators (such as ladybugs) to eat their sweet honeydew
    Remove dead plant matter and insect carcasses Form large, potentially disruptive swarms during mating flight
    Facilitate the reproduction of certain trees by transporting seeds It is not uncommon for them to nest near residential buildings - for example between the paving stones of terraces and courtyards - risk of loosening of the pavement
    Can also penetrate into the house and become a burden there

    background

    Interesting facts about ants

    Take a close look at the amazing family of insects called ants. The animals have been incredibly strong in survival since the Cretaceous period, not least because of their famous industriousness. In the Bible it says in the book of Proverbs:

    Ants belong to the order of Hymenoptera - this already means that they can also be winged. They are very species-rich and are found practically all over the world: there are a total of around 13,000 species that are native to temperate, tropical and subtropical, sometimes even subarctic climate zones on all continents.

    Unlike other hymenoptera, there are only social, i.e. colony-forming, ant species. Their colonies are well organized militarily and have therefore functioned admirably well for thousands of years. Above all, due to the clear division of labor within the caste system and the very mass-effective communication methods with scent trails and vibration signals, ants are among the most survivable species in the animal world.

    Ants cover all possible diets across species: from omnivorous, predatory and scavenging, honeydew-milking, seed-collecting, thieving to mushroom-growing types, everything is included.

    Types of flying ants in the garden

    It is not possible to report on all ant species here - and the majority of the species, which live primarily in tropical areas, are also of little relevance to our local garden culture. In the following, we will therefore concentrate on the two species that like to populate our gardens in Central Europe: the black garden ant and the yellow meadow ant.

    Black garden ant

    Commonly known as the garden ant is the species of ant that occurs most frequently in our gardens in this country. And this is the black garden ant (Zoological Lasius niger). It has a typical ant appearance with a 3-5mm long black tripartite segmented body. The queens reach a length of 8 to 9 centimeters.

    Like many other ant variants, black road ants are quite adaptable: They accept different places for their nest relatively undemandingly: The animals make themselves at home both in the lawn and under tree bark, vertically in cavities in masonry or in the spaces between terrace and courtyard paving . The nest consists of passages and chambers and is reasonably stabilized by plant remains.

    Yellow Meadow Ant

    Yellow meadow ants are relatively small

    But also the much smaller yellow meadow ant, zoological Lasius flavus, likes to be found in gardens in our part of the world. It is only about 2 to 4 ½ mm long and, as its name suggests, colored yellowish to reddish brown.

    However, the winged sexual animals are significantly darker and also much larger - at least the queens with a length of up to 9 mm. As a result, they can hardly be distinguished from the sexual animals of the black road ants and, when they swarm out of their nest, they almost look like a different species compared to the small, yellow-red workers.

    Red Meadow Ant

    The red meadow ant mainly nests in the lawn. You can recognize their nests by the grassy hillocks. The species tends to live mainly underground - they even take care of their food underground by keeping their own root aphid colonies and milking their honeydew excretions. They therefore hardly have to go in and out and only become visible and noticeable en masse when their nest is destroyed - or when the phase of the flying ants begins. With this species, a plague of flying ants can quickly come as a surprise.

    frequently asked Questions

    How many ants live in a colony?

    This varies quite a bit depending on the species. In general, however, ants form very large colonies compared to other social hymenoptera. In the case of the black garden ant, our most common ant in the garden, up to 40,000 individuals can live in one nest. In other species, however, it can also be up to 20 million animals! Other species, on the other hand, live in cozy flat shares with only about a dozen roommates.

    The distribution within the so-called castes is comparable for all ant species, but the number of individuals per caste varies. The queen caste in particular is sometimes occupied by just one full female, sometimes by several, sometimes by hundreds. In the case of the black garden ant, there are initially several queens, which are then reduced to a dominant one by fighting each other and the workers. Males, being winged all their short lives, are only produced from a few to a few hundred. Their number depends on various factors, such as colony size, age of the queen, and some environmental conditions such as temperature, humidity, and nest condition.

    How long do ants live?

    Among insects, ants are veritable Methuselahs. While many insect species have life cycles of only one or two years, most ant species can reach tens of years.

    The most important in the state, the queens, always live the longest. The oldest known queen ant in a breed has turned 29 years old. The workers usually don't get quite as old, but usually several years in larger species. As with most insect species, the males live the shortest: They are only needed for mating and therefore only exist for the reproduction phase.

    In their phase as flying ants, the sex animals stay only 2 to 3 days. The males then die and the young queens shed their wings again.

    Can flying ants be dangerous?

    No, flying ants are the least dangerous members of the ant colony for us humans. Even if they look almost like small stinging insects compared to the other ants, because they are much larger and have wings. However, they are actually completely harmless because they are primarily focused on their task of reproduction. The worker bees, also known as “soldiers”, are responsible for guarding the nest. This name already shows that you have to be more careful of them than of the flying ants buzzing around in the frenzy of love.

    The workers only bite when the nest is attacked. That can be pretty painful. As long as it stays with individual bites, these ant attacks are not critical. On the other hand, it becomes problematic if one is covered in bites, bites occur in the mouth or genital area and/or the bitten person has an allergy to insect venom. Then medical help should be sought immediately.

    Why does the death of the queen mean the end of an ant colony?

    When the queen dies of old age, or when a follower of the increasingly popular hobby of ant breeding collects her for his own use, there is no one left to reproduce and produce colony-maintaining sex animals. Worker bees do not have sufficiently developed reproductive organs and cannot replace the role of the queen. A generation of sexual animals, i.e. flying ants, can then no longer be produced. Thus, a state can never be older than the queen.

    Is a plague of flying ants reason for a rent reduction?

    Not for now.There is no right to a rent reduction, especially if it's just a few animals buzzing through the window like flying ants. Only when the plague has reached such proportions that the house is no longer normally habitable can a rent reduction be made possible. This definition is of course very vague and must always be assessed on a case-by-case basis.

    In general, however, the following applies: Any causes by the tenant must be ruled out - for example, negligent luring through windows and doors that are open at night while the light is on at the same time. In any case, the landlord must first be given the opportunity to eliminate the problem. As a rule, however, it must be expected that complaints will be dismissed because of the reasonableness of such a completely natural burden on life.

Category:

Animals in the garden