Enviroguard Pest Guides
Ants
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Black Ant or Garden Ant (Lasius niger)
Appearance • Dark brown/black colour. • Workers 4-5mm long, queens 15mm. • No sting. |
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Lifestyle
• Foraging worker ants follow well-defined trails around food sources.
• Swarming occurs between mating winged queens and fertile males in mid to late summer.
• Nests are often located outdoors in soil and below paving slabs. Nest locations can be identified by the presence of finely powdered soil around exit holes.
Pharoah's
Ant (Monomorium pharaonis) • Workers 1.5-2mm long, yellow-brown with brown abdomen; males 3mm long,
black and winged;
queens 3.5-6mm long, dark red in colour with wings.
• Black eyes.
Lifestyle
• Follows well-defined trails often associated with heating systems.
• Feeds indoors, preferring high protein (meat, fats, etc) to sweet foodstuffs.
• Swarms any time of the year - each queen produces up to 3,500 eggs in its lifetime.
• Has multiple, hard to locate nests, often in hospitals and centrally heated blocks.
• Colonies range from a few dozen to 300,000 - new colonies are often formed when nests have been disturbed e.g., as a result of insecticide treatments.
Overview
While black ants can be an unsightly incovenience and may damage food used for human consumption, they are primarily a nuisance pest, posing no significant threat to public health. The same cannot be said for Pharoah's ants, however. As this ant's diet largely comprises decomposing foodstuffs - often found in unhygienic places - it is often involved in the transmission of germs. As such, it poses a significant risk to health, particularly in hospitals.
Read more at the British Pest Control Association.
For an efficient, environmentally friendly solution to your ant pest problem,
contact Enviroguard pest control - NOW.