Know and fight flying ants

Know and fight flying ants

the essentials in brief

  • Flying ants are “completely normal” ants on their wedding flight
  • With simple measures like mosquito screens and no light with the windows open, you can prevent them from entering the house
  • The wedding flight takes place in summer
  • The males die after mating

What can you do against flying ants in the house or garden?

If you are bothered by swarms of ants, the easiest way is tolerance. Because the wedding flight only lasts about 2 to 3 days and only once a year, so that you will soon have peace again. So instead of laboriously fighting the animals, you can just sit back and wait.

also read

  • Know and fight leaf miner
  • Fighting ants - myths and truths
  • Fighting ants in the lawn - the 10 best tips

Not entirely without parallel defense measures, of course. The most effective methods are purely physical barriers that prevent the 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 expensive for the few days of the wedding flight - but if you don't want to be kept awake night after night by buzzing, biting mosquitoes or surprised by other swarming insects, you will also benefit in the long term.
  • Keep windows and doors closed : Of course, you don't want to go without ventilation in summer than at any other time. But if it has to be set up somehow - for example by investing in air conditioning or in not so hot weather, the windows and doors should remain open during the ant flight times.
  • Lights out : This measure also helps in general against invading flying insects: nocturnal beetles, moths, mosquitoes and winged ants orient themselves towards the light and are therefore strongly attracted by bright lighting in the house. So if possible, don't leave lights on with the windows or patio doors open.
  • Odor barriers : ants find lemon juice and smells of cloves, cinnamon, chilli, lavender or bay leaves repulsive. The smell of coffee should also have a driving effect. For example, if you mix water with lemon juice, essential oils of the aforementioned fragrances or strong espresso and pour the mixture into a water disperser, you can contain the flying nuisances directly on the spot.
  • Vacuum cleaner : The vacuum cleaner can also be used to help against flying ants. A somewhat brutal method, but as a rule ants, even the winged ones, are very robust. What must of course be observed is to close the suction tube after the suction attack (e.g. with a cloth toggle) 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 ingredients can be sprayed and can therefore be used well on pests in the air. The effect is usually very quick. However, the active ingredients are usually purely chemical and not only toxic to flying ants, but also to other animals, including your pets.

What to do against flying ants

Prevent flying ants

In order not to let flying ants develop in your garden and thus easily get into the house, it makes sense to look for ant nests beforehand and to remove them. In addition, before and after the sex animals' flight phase, ants can of course become annoying due to their nest building and their everyday work in the state. Ant routes over the terrace and sometimes into the house are the most disturbing matters. If you set up your nests under patio slabs, the undercutting can also lead to loosening of the pavement bed and sagging of the slabs.

If they crawl into the house en masse, it is of course annoying and possibly harmful because they can also decompose building material here.

Disturbing ants' nest : If you constantly level an ant's nest in the lawn or in your patio pavement and pour water over it, the ants will be troubled without them being killed unnecessarily. They have enough to do with putting their nest back in order, which leaves them with less time to look after the brood.

Limescale barriers : Alkaline substances such as chalk or garden lime (€ 9.46 at Amazon *) also have an ant-repellent effect.

Bait : You can also use bait to catch ants. The best attractant is a bowl of slightly stale beer sweetened with a spoonful of honey or sugar. If you place them over an ant route, the animals will be magically attracted by the sweet, fermenting smell. They fall in and drown if they try to get hold of it.

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) earth or wood wool
  2. Place the pot near the ant nest, preferably directly above the course of an ant trail
  3. Wait until the animals discover the warm potting soil for themselves and crawl in through the drain hole. You will recognize an ideal breeding ground in the flower pot and move your colony into it. You can tell that this has happened by the numerous white pupae in the pot.
  4. When the move is complete, pick up the pot from below with a shovel and transport it, if possible, without falling over, for example to a nearby wood. The place should be at least half a kilometer away so that the ants do not find their way back to their original nest.
flying ants

Baking powder : Baking powder or baking soda is an old home remedy for ants. Here, too, the effect is based on the alkaline effect: it causes contact burns in ants. The method is not particularly reliable, however, 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 species of their own. Because they resemble stinging insects when they are winged, some people may even have a vague fear that they might sting. But don't worry: flying ants are not dangerous. This is because it is not a special kind of ants of its own, but only the sex animals in the ant colony. And they are at best annoying.

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Wedding flight

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

The swarming out of the sex animals is also called “wedding flight” with ants. It usually takes place in early or midsummer. The young queens and males then come together from colony to colony and start a real mating marathon. A young queen can be mated by up to 40 males and stores the sperm in a semen sac.

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

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

Ants - hard-working helpers and annoying enthusiasts

Ants must be classified as beneficial insects for the garden. They are effective in helping pest control and maintaining ecological balance. Here is a brief overview of the useful and harmful or disturbing properties of ants:

Beneficial propertiesPest properties
Some eat pests such as leaf beetle larvae or butterfly caterpillars, as well as snail eggsDefend aphids against predators (such as ladybugs) to eat their sweet honeydew
Transporting away dead plant material and insect carcassesDuring the wedding flight they form large, possibly annoying swarms
Favor the reproduction of certain trees by transporting seedsIt is not uncommon for them to nest near residential buildings - for example between paving stones on terraces and inner courtyards - there is a risk of the paving loosening
Can also penetrate the house and become a burden there

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Interesting facts about ants

Take a close look at the amazing insect family of ants. The animals have been incredibly strong in survival since the Cretaceous, not least because of their famous hard work. Already 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 occur almost all over the world: There are a total of around 13,000 species that are native to temperate as well as tropical and subtropical, sometimes even sub-arctic climates on all continents.

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

Ants cover all possible diets across all 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 talk about all ant species here - and the majority of the species, which mainly live in tropical areas, are hardly relevant for our local garden culture. In the following, we 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

The type of ant that is most common in our gardens in this country is known as the garden ant. And that is the black garden ant (zoologically Lasius niger). It has a typical ant appearance with a 3-5 mm long, black, three-part segmented body. The queens reach a length of 8 to 9 centimeters.

Like many other varieties of ants, black garden ants are quite adaptable: they take on different places for their nests with relatively little effort: the animals settle down in the lawn as well as under tree bark, vertically in cavities in brickwork or in the spaces between terrace and courtyard pavement . The nest consists of corridors and chambers and is reasonably stabilized by plant remains.

Yellow meadow ant

flying antsBut also the much smaller yellow meadow ant, zoologically Lasius flavus, is often found in gardens in our latitudes. It is only about 2 to 4 ½ mm long and, as its name suggests, yellowish to red-brown in color.

The winged sex animals are, however, much 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 sex animals of the black garden ants and when they swarm out of their nest they appear almost like a different species compared to the small, yellow-red worker ants.

Red meadow ant

The red meadow ant nests mainly in the lawn. You can recognize their nests by mounds overgrown with grass. The species mainly lives underground - they even provide for their food underground by keeping their own root colonies and milking their honeydew excretions. They hardly have to go in and out and are only visible and noticeable in large numbers when their nest is destroyed - or when the phase of the flying ants begins. With this species, a plague of flying ants can therefore quickly become a surprise.

frequently asked Questions

How many ants live in a colony?

That is relatively different depending on the species. In general, however, ants form very large states in comparison to other social hymenoptera. The black garden ant, our most common ant in the garden, can have up to 40,000 individuals in one nest. With other species it can also be up to 20 million animals! Still other species live in cozy shared apartments with only a dozen or so roommates.

The distribution within the so-called castes is comparable for all ant species, how many individuals exist per cast, but varies. Above all, the queen caste is sometimes only occupied by 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 through mutual and combating by the workers. Males, which are winged all their short lives, are only produced a few to a few hundred. Their number depends on various factors, such as the size of the country, the age of the queen and some environmental conditions such as temperature, humidity and the state of the nest.

How long do ants live?

Ants are true Methuselah among insects. While many species of insects only have a one or two year life cycle, most species of ants can live in double digits.

The most important in the state, the queens, always live the longest. The oldest known queen ant in a breed is a proud 29 years old. The workers are usually not quite that old, but in the case of larger species usually several years. As with most insect species, the males live the shortest: they are only needed for mating and therefore only exist for the reproductive phase.

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

Can flying ants be dangerous?

No, for us humans, flying ants are the most harmless members of the ant state. Even if, compared to the rest of the ants, they are much larger in shape and have wings that look almost like small biting insects. But they are actually completely harmless because they are primarily focused on their reproductive function. The watch over the nest is the responsibility of the workers, also known as “soldiers”. This name already shows that you have to watch out for them much sooner than for the flying ants buzzing around in love frenzy.

The workers only bite when the nest is attacked. That can be pretty painful. As long as it remains with individual bites, these ant attacks are not critical. On the other hand, it becomes problematic if one is covered with bites, there are bites in the mouth or genital area and / or there is an insect venom allergy in the person bitten. 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 a follower of the increasingly popular hobby ants rearing her for his own purposes, nobody is there for the reproduction and the production of colony-preserving sex animals. The workers do not have sufficiently developed sexual organs and cannot replace the role of the queen. A generation of sex animals, i.e. flying ants, can then no longer be produced. Thus, a state can never grow older than the queen.

Is a plague caused by flying ants a reason for a rent reduction?

Not at first. Especially if there are only a few animals that fly through the window like flying ants, there is no right to a rent reduction. Only when the plague reaches such proportions that the house is no longer 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 excluded - for example, negligent luring through windows and doors that are open at night while the lights are on. In any case, the landlord must first be given the opportunity to rectify the problem. As a rule, however, it must be expected that lawsuits will be dismissed because of the reasonableness of such a natural burden on life.