Ants 101: Practical Information to Help Pest Professionals Deal with Ants Successfully

By:      Paul J. Bello

            ACE, BCE, MBA

Date:   February 7, 2025

Below are a number of informational items listed here to enhance your understanding of ants such that you will be more successful with your ant control efforts. The better we know the target pest, the better prepared we are to deal with them for our customers.

1. Proper identification is critical to control success. This is so because behavior and preferences may vary by species.
2. Knowledge of behavior and biology is critical to optimize control results and success.
3. Argentine ants and Odorous house ants may travel over two hundred feet from their nest to a food source.
4. While bed bugs may be getting all the attention and press, ants are still the industry’s most common pest.
5. Many factors contribute to why ants are the industry’s top pest, including some of the next few listed items.
6. Ants may forage far from the nest in search of food resources.
7. Poor sanitation is not necessary for ants to be present and become a problem at an account.
8. Ants are among the most common insects found in the landscape surrounding your account structures.
9. On the common suburban residential street, any home may be invaded by ants at any time.
10. Many of the most troublesome ants have great reproductive capability.
11. There may be several ant colonies within striking distance of an account structure at one time.
12. With multiple queens some ant colonies may replenish the colony population seemingly faster than pest technicians can kill them.
13. Ant behavior experts contend that at any one time just 5% to 10% of the ant colony’s population may be out of the nest foraging. Therefore, the number of ants we see are very few compared to the total population of the colony.
14. Reportedly, there are over 12,000 species of ants in the world.
15. In the United States there are about 821 ant species and only about 21 of these are considered structural pests.
16. While many folks may mistakenly say that fire ants bite, it is the fire ant sting that causes the damage.
17. Fire ant stings are dangerous because of the venom contained within the sting.
18. Fire ant venom is a potent toxicant which has a greater toxicity LD50 than most pesticides.
19. Since fire ants were introduced into the United States references indicate that over eighty people have been killed as a result of fire ant stings.
20. Medical experts contend that fire ant sting incidents are under reported in the United States.
21. There are many food resources available within the common landscape surrounding structures that may support ants.
22. Some ant species may thrive on honeydew produced by various plant feeders including aphids, mealy bugs, scale insects and others.
23. Ant activity around a structure may be reduced via the control of plant feeding insects.
24. Ants may also forage on nectar.
25. Ants may follow structural edges found around the account’s exterior.
26. Structural edges include driveways, walks, decks, fences, hoses, landscape edging, landscape timbers, curbs, lawn edges and other items.
27. Structural edges may lead ants directly to an account.
28. Ant identification begins with the number of nodes present in the ant specimen’s pedicel.
29. The ant pedicel is the waist like area located between the ant’s thorax and abdomen.
30. Ants are small animals and may easily enter a structure through various entry points present within the structure.
31. Ants are either mono-morphic or poly-morphic.
32. Mono-morphic adult ants are all about the same size.
33. Poly-morphic ants may be a variety of sizes.
34. Carpenter ants are polymorphic.
35. Argentine ants are mono-morphic.
36. Odorous house ants are mono-morphic.
37. Fire ants are poly-morphic.
38. The Little Black Ant is an actual species of ant that is known by the common name Little Black Ant.
39. Acrobat ants are mono-morphic.
40. Acrobat ants have a heart shaped abdomen.
41. At certain times or when agitated or disturbed, Acrobat ants will hold their abdomen upright.
42. Some ant species will readily nest in disturbed soil areas within the landscape. Soil adjacent to landscape timber walls, retaining walls and other such areas may be readily nested in by ground nesting ants.
43. Some ant species colonies are multiple queen colonies where there are a number of queens within the colony.
44. Fire ants may be multi-queen or single queen colonies.
45. Ant species may have certain food preferences.
46. Ant food preferences may change at certain times of the year based upon colony needs.
47. Even though you may see foraging ants carrying pieces of solid food, adult ants are liquid feeders.
48. Developing larvae ants are known as “the stomach of the colony”.
49. Larvae ants are solid food eaters.
50. Solid foods carried back to the colony by foraging ants are fed to the larval ants.
51. Larval ants turn solid foods to liquid foods for the colony.
52. Foraging ants are all females.
53. The queen runs the ant colony.
54. Carpenter ants do not eat wood.
55. Carpenter ants hollow out wood to create tunnels and voids within the wood to serve as the colony’s nest sight.
56. Carpenter ants tunnels excavated in wood are called galleries.
57. Carpenter ant galleries are chiseled smooth by the ants using their mandibles.
58. The “live” or cambium layer of the tree, the upper area of the tree’s surface including the bark, may be tunneled through however, carpenter ants prefer to excavate galleries in the heartwood of a live tree.
59. Carpenter ants may travel great distances, over one hundred yards or more, from their main nest to invade an account.
60. Carpenter ants may set up “satellite nests” in a structure that are not the main or primary nest.
61. Some ants are predators and feed on other animals.
62. Ants have elbowed antenna referred to as geniculate antenna.
63. Ants have compound eyes.
64. Some ants have ocelli, or simple eyes, in combination with compound eyes.
65. Ants may travel along and follow pheromone trails laid down by their colony mates.
66. Experts report that one tablespoon of ant pheromone is sufficient to set up a pheromone trail that circles the earth about three times. This was reported by E. O. Wilson.
67. Ant pheromone trails may last about one year if not washed off.
68. Compare to other pests, ants are killed easily by most labeled pesticides.
69. Research indicates that ants find there way by orientating themselves to objects, the position of the sun and other means. This was reported by E. O. Wilson.
70. Ants are social insects, live in colonies and share roles/responsibilities for the benefit of the colony.
71. Social insects do not develop resistance to pesticides.
72. Ants may relocate their colony rather quickly if disturbed.
73. Carpenter ants are mostly active after dark.
74. Carpenter ants may excavate and nest in pressure treated wood.
75. Some ants may nest in various places including under debris, beneath mulch, firewood piles, in utility boxes, cable television & telephone boxes, under slabs, within insulation, beneath insulation and other such places.
76. For a variety of reasons ants have been a troublesome pest in hospitals. In one case ants invaded an operating room and intensive care unit of a hospital resulting in two of three ICU wings being shut down and patients being relocated. Control measures including extensive baiting and perimeter applications were ineffective until the ants were traced to nest locations found within the flat roof insulation.
77. Fire ants have stung patients in their hospital beds resulting in human mortality.
78. Just because you see ants carrying your applied bait it doesn’t mean that they will feed on the bait and control will be achieved. At a college campus location where ants were a severe problem, ants were observed taking large quantities of granular bait however, when the trails of ants were followed it was observed that the ants were simply carrying the bait as much as fifty feet and dropping it.
79. Ants may consume baits faster and more than we might think. In field work conducted using sugar water, Argentine ants emptied as much as eight ounces of liquid in as little as two hours.
80. Ants may penetrate your perimeter application due to their behavior rather than the actual efficacy of the pesticide applied.
81. With all pests including ants, application efficacy is dose related.
82. Where and how pesticides are applied will have a great affect your ant control results.
83. Monitor baits may be used to establish ant forage trails that may be followed to track ants back to the nest location.
84. Sugar water and jelly are good choices for monitor baits.
85. Once established, heavily traveled forage trails may be followed back to the ant nest location.
86. Just like traffic in a large city, the closer to the food source, the more ants you will find in the trail.
87. While ants may travel at random in search of a food source, the path they tack back to their nest location is more direct.
88. In this author’s opinion, “The Ultimate Guide to Ants” is one of the best educational and entertaining videos available about ants in general. This documentary originally aired on the Discovery Channel a few years ago and may still be available for purchase online.
89. One of the best books published on ants may be “The Ants” by E.O. Wilson of Harvard University who also appears in “The Ultimate Guide to Ants”. Just owning this book will make you smarter about ants.
90. A fire ant mound may extend four feet or more deep within the soil.
91. There are several trails that extend just beneath the surface from a fire ant mound.
92. While some references indicate that Pharaoh ant colonies may bud, split to form another colony, in response to disturbance by pesticide applications, some research also indicates that these colonies may eventually bud anyway.
93. While using monitor baits may not help you to find an ant nest location 100% of the time, it will also show you where the ant nest is not !
94. Foam and dust applications may be an effective tool in treating suspected ant nest locations.
95. It is wise to trim branches and foliage away from a structure to prevent ants from using them as a bridge to the structure.
96. Landscape foundation plantings should be trimmed a minimum of twelve inches from the structure to enhance ant and other pest control program results.
97. It is wise to include applications that target honey due producing pests in the landscape surrounding structures as part of your ant control program.
98. When timed and measured on a relative scale, Argentine ants travel at about 70 mph.
99. When times and measured on a relative scale, Carpenter ants travel at over 100 mph.
100. When measured on a relative scale, an Argentine ant traveling 100 feet from the nest one way to get food is equivalent to a six foot man traveling about eleven miles.
101. Ants don’t take time off or vacations.
102. Reportedly, an ant can lift from 20 to 50 times its own body weight. That’s equivalent to a 200 lb man being able to lift from 4,000 to 10,000 lbs.
103. Ant lions are not ants at all but the larval form of flying insets of the order Neuroptera and are also called “doodlebugs”. These insects create funnel shaped “pitfall traps” to catch small arthropods and ants that they prey upon. The antlion has large jaws with which they catch their prey.
104.  If you are able to find the nest, chances are, you will be able to solve the ant problem.
105.   SOS means “Seek Out the Source” to solve ant problems.  While finding an ant nest can be challenging, it is possible and doing so will serve to solve any ant problem.