This morning they swarmed. Thousands and thousands of workers coated the sidewalk and wall of the garage, led by what looked like one or two new queens and maybe half a dozen soldiers (or maybe they were all new queens - the soldiers that I see in the compost heap are much smaller than the 6-8 that were leading the swarm). The Angry Kid was fascinated. She could have watched them for hours, except that she got too close, and they swarmed onto the skirt of her dress. By the time we noticed she was pretty much covered with ants. She was a trooper, though. She thought it was more funny than creepy. (That's my girl!)
Here are my entomological questions:
Without looking at an actual specimen, does this description fit with my guess that these are little black ants? Were the large "soldiers" in the swarm really new queens? I thought only one new queen went out at a time. Is this nest something I should eradicate? The ants don't bother me much. They aerate the garden nicely, but they do kill earthworms when they find them. I would like to have my compost heap back. I'm betting that if I just empty the compost and start over they will have reestablished the nest in days (if not hours).
9 comments:
That sounds really interesting. I'd like to see photos of this personally.
planting garlic in the compost heap might get rid of them.
AP, I don't think this will help much with your current situation, but a great site for IDing the creepy crawlies is What's That Bug.
Give Pz Myers a call!
I reject your agenda. Ants have never been "queens." Gay rights have gone far enough, and extending them to ants would be ridiculous.
I'm so envious! I've had a compost heap for years, and not a single ant nest yet. Sigh. Some folks just have all the luck ...
I'm not an expert on ants, but I do know that ant colonies can often have multiple queens, so it's possible you were seeing multiple queens.
Regarding identification, keying out insects to genus and/or species can be tough. I'd try to catch a few, kill them (or chill them, if you don't want to kill them), and take a look at them under a dissecting microscope or a good magnifying glass. That should get you the level of detail you'll need to compare your ants with (already identified) closeup pictures available online (or to use an official key). The Wikipedia's Ant page has lots of detail, including a good anatomical diagram that might help clarify terms you'll likely need to know for a precise species identification.
If you don't have a dissecting scope or good magnifying glass, befriend someone in your campus's biology department; they'll have them. In fact, if you want, you should be able to take closeup pictures through the eyepiece of a dissecting scope, and then post them for all of us to see!
Don't complain, AP, one of my friends got ants AND chipmunks AND racoons involved with her compost.
I'm with Radagast... actually, I'm currently working on network analysis for a book I'm writing and I needed good example, so, I'm sure you wouldn't mind doing some research for me! ;-)
So, get the magnifying glass or whatever else you need and get cracking on those multiple-monarchy ant networks and let us know how they work out, report any coup or whatever else it is that ants do for entertainment!
Hmmm...sounds like a gross problem, AP. Do the ants sting? Usually, the presence of ants indicates something sticky or sugary. You're only putting vegetable/fruit/eggshell stuff in your compost heap, correct? Sometimes I pour leftover hummingbird food or a two-liter bottle of store-brand soda (non-diet) in there to moisten things up and speed bacterial action, but no ants. Hmmmmm.
I have my compost in a tumbling bin (by Enviro-Cycle) that gets turned around five or six times every 48 hours. I've had quite a few roly-polies, millipedes, a cricket or two, and that's about it.
Try OrganicGardening.com for a little advice. I'll ask around here and see if my fellow gardeners have the same problem.
Thanks for all the comments, everyone. The size of the nest in the compost heap is much smaller. I am aware of two separate swarms that left the nest (including the one I described), and now the activity and population in the nest is much reduced.
The ants are too small and my eyes too bad to be able to accurately identify them. (I don't have a magnifying glass or a loop.) The workers are 2-3 mm long and the soldiers 4-5 mm. The queen/soldiers that were leading the swarm were 7-10 mm long. Several of the queen/soldiers were trapped in a spider's web (happy spider), and so I got to examine them pretty closely. Again I couldn't make out any identifying marks. They just looked black.
Next time they swarm I'll take pictures. But I'm betting it won't be until next spring.
Frenchdoc, last spring when I unloaded the compost I had to dispose of a squirrel that had crawled in looking for a warm place to die. I prefer ants and dead squirrels to the rat colony I had to deal with in ILU-town.
Post a Comment