Black garden ant

Ants are highly organised social insects. It is the foraging worker ant that invades buildings in search of food. Although Black Ants have a wide range of acceptable food sources, they are particularly attracted to sweet substances. If a foraging worker successfully identifies a food source, this is communicated back to co-workers, which inevitably results in vast numbers of ants invading the property and contaminating suitable human food sources.

At Pestocatch, we understand the nuisance that ants can cause in your home or business. That's why we offer comprehensive ant control services to ensure your space remains pest-free.

With just a couple of rare exceptions British ants fall into two categories the stinging Myrmicine ants – typified by the long bodied and sculptured red ants, and the non-stinging Formicine ants – smoother and shorter bodied, the best known examples being black ants, yellow meadow ants and wood ants.

Black Ants are entirely harmless, like all other Formicine ants they do not have a sting and unlike the wood ants they don’t spray formic acid either. Jaws are the Black Ants’ main defence, but they are not strong enough to break someone’s skin.

Black Ants eat insects and sugary substances such as nectar and rotting fruit. They are dutiful farmers of aphids, protecting them from predators, collecting the sugary honeydew that they produce, and carrying them around to establish new herds. They probably also take some aphids underground over winter, it is likely that some of these will be eaten!

Black Ants are important soil engineers, mixing it up and increasing its fertility.

A Black Ant colony will contain just one queen – many other ant species actually have more than one queen in each colony. A fully grown Black Ant colony contains the queen and 4,000 to 7,000 female workers, but a big colony may contain 15,000 workers. Only the queen lays eggs, the workers forage for food, feed the larvae and build the nest.

The hardest part of the Black Ant life cycle is the job of the young queen in raising the first generation of workers. This is very difficult as she cannot forage for food and has no herds of aphids. The queen shuts herself in a cell underground and when her first eggs hatch she feeds the larvae with a fluid created from the breakdown of her own muscles. By the time the first workers emerge from their pupae the Queen will be terribly weak, having lost about half her body weight. The first role of the workers is to forage food and nurse the queen back into good health.

Worker ants find food by sending out scouts. When a good source of food is found they lay down a scent trail so that other workers can easily find the food. They have two stomachs, their true stomach and a much larger social stomach that they fill with food to take back to the colony and feed the larvae, builders and the queen.

If the young queen successfully rears the first brood, if she is not deposed by a parasitic ant species, and if her workers find good food sources then her colony will thrive. Only after several years when the colony is fully grown will the queen lay the first eggs that will become drones (males) and queens. On a hot and humid day between June and September the nuptial flight occurs, males and females from many colonies in the area take to the air simultaneously and mate. The new queens then lose their wings and burrow underground to start the cycle again.

While most colonies of small black ants near human habitation will be the Black Ant, there are three other very similar species Lasius platythorax, Lasius alienus, Lasius psammophilus, to tell the difference you need to look very hard at their hairiness under a microscope!

Pharaoh Ants

Monomorium pharaoni

The Pharaoh ant, one of the most challenging household and hospital ants to control, got its name from the mistaken idea that it was one of the ancient plagues of Egypt. Found worldwide, they are almost transparent, ranging from yellowish, light brown, or red, while their abdomen is of darker coloring. The ants have six legs and are only 1.5-2 mm long. While they have wings before mating, they are never able to fly.