Ant queen: how to find

Ants can become unwanted guests in your home, causing a lot of trouble. Their colonies quickly expand and cause damage both indoors and outdoors, damaging crops. An effective way to prevent further spread of ants is to locate and remove the queen ant from your area. To successfully implement this task, you will need either special knowledge or help from professionals.

Find and catch the queen ant

Let's look at a few questions to clarify why ants may appear in our homes. Typically, these insects choose places with a temperature of about 25 degrees to build their nests. Why do they come to our homes?

The answer is pretty simple:

1. Access to food: Ants choose places with constant access to food, and if you have a lot of food, this can lead to an ant colony.
2. Heat Preference: Ants prefer warm conditions, so during warm periods they may appear in your home.
3. Wet conditions: Many types of ants prefer damp living conditions.
4. Love for sweets and flour: Ants are attracted to sweet and starchy foods, which can also cause them to appear.

So, keeping things clean and preventing access to food can reduce the likelihood of attracting ants to your home.

Types of ants at home

There are different types of ants, including red, yellow and black. Regardless of the species, even if you notice just a few ants, it is important to take immediate action to prevent the anthill from spreading and forming a colony in your home. The presence of these insects in a human home is undesirable.

To effectively combat an ant colony and achieve the desired results in the fight against these insects, it is important to identify the following:

1. Search for the queen (queen);
2. Determination of the main locations of working individuals;
3. Identifying the location of the anthill.

Ants prefer to settle in dark and hard-to-reach places near a water source. They may choose the kitchen area or restroom as their habitat. Comfortable conditions for them also include thermal areas such as heating pipes, boilers or stoves.

A thorough inspection of floors, walls, electrical wiring and water pipes will reveal openings through which ants make their way to the nest. Places where parquet, linoleum or laminate connects to walls can also be used by ants to build nest tunnels.

When living in an apartment, ants often take up residence in floor slabs, especially when their current space becomes insufficient. In such cases, a professional team is required with the necessary tools and drugs to effectively destroy the nest.

Cunning! By monitoring the paths of movement of ants, you can identify the location of their nest and seal these passages using silicone or plasticine.

Individuals and types of ants

One of the most common unwanted visitors in the home environment is the steppe harvester ant (Messor structor). Workers and soldiers of this species usually range in size from 3 to 9 millimeters. Females and males reach approximately 1 centimeter. Two other species, the yellow Amazon ant (Polyergus rufescens) and the slave ant (Raptiformica sanguinea), are also common visitors to private homes. Both of these species belong to slave ants. The body length of soldiers varies from 5 to 7 mm, in females - from 8 to 9 mm, and in males - from 6 to 7 mm.

Why is the queen ant called the queen?

The entire anthill and its colony are subordinate to the queen, who performs a key function in reproduction. The queen gives birth to offspring, and her role is mainly to create females, which in turn form new colonies.

Almost the entire anthill functions in her interests. However, if the queen produces offspring too quickly or, conversely, too slowly, the subjects may decide to destroy the queen.

After the destruction of the queen and the bulk of the workers, it is necessary to regularly carry out preventive measures indoors to prevent the resumption of the population.

What does an ant queen look like?

To successfully combat ants in an apartment, it is necessary to detect and destroy the queen ant. If the queen, or queen, is preserved, she is able to give birth to new offspring in a short time, which will lead to a rapid restoration of the insect population. Within a month, the number of ants can increase several times. Therefore, identifying and eliminating the dominant female is key to effectively controlling unwanted insects in your home.

The anthill functions according to a clear hierarchical system, and at its top is the queen of the colony. The queen (queen) regularly gives birth to offspring, ensuring continuous growth and restoration of the number of insects. This is the main function of the uterus. All other duties are performed by worker ants: ordinary workers search for food and building materials, and soldier ants protect the anthill.

Worker ants cannot replace the queen or take her place, so for the successful survival of the colony the queen must remain alive.

How to find the queen queen?

To identify the ant queen, it is necessary to distinguish its characteristics from the working individuals and know its characteristic features.

Signs of the uterus:

1. The abdomen is large in size.
2. Presence of stripes.
3. Significant size compared to other ants.
4. Inactivity of the uterus.
5. Darker chitinous shell.

Additional information: there may be several queens in an anthill. Females perform flight and create new colonies, while queens can coexist in the same nest.

The presence of wings and the ability to lay eggs explain the queen's larger abdomen compared to worker ants. She prefers protein foods as they are rich in calories. During the ant summer, when the future queens mature, the males die, and the fertilized females look for a place to reproduce and create a new anthill. During her long life, which can last for decades, the queen can lay up to half a million eggs.

Wings are present in both sexes of ants, but females chew them off after fertilization.

We are looking for the Queen's home in an apartment

You always see only a tenth of all the individuals of the anthill in the apartment. When a small group of ants discover sugar or other food debris on your floor, they are most likely workers. Eliminating them will not lead to the desired results. The queen will quickly resume her work, lay new eggs and continue reproducing. Success can only be achieved by searching and catching all the queens of the anthill.

Finding an ant nest will require patience and the following steps:

1. Monitor the movement of worker ants by studying their routes to food.
2. The queen often hides in remote, warm and humid places. Inspect the restrooms, ventilation shafts and lockers.
3. Do not exclude the possibility of ants living on balconies or in nearby basements.
4. All ants prefer bulk foods such as cereals, sugar and flour. Check cabinets containing these products carefully.

The insects' habitat can be almost anywhere, including hard-to-reach places such as floor slabs, attics or stairwells.

Is it enough to kill the queen ant?

It is impossible to say with certainty that the destruction of the queen will lead to the complete disappearance of the colony. For example, if you destroyed the queen at a time when she already had brood, the probability of complete destruction of the anthill is high. However, if the queen managed to lay eggs, and the worker ants managed to protect them, one of them may contain a female or a future queen, which will grow up and create a new nest.

Fighting colonies of apartment ants

On the Internet you can find many different recipes offered for getting rid of insects, but in practice they often turn out to be ineffective.

Fighting ants may include several methods:

1. Using folk remedies, such as plants with a pungent odor, according to grandma's advice.
2. The use of chemicals for treating premises, such as powders, poisonous baits, spray cans and tubes of gel.
3. Installation of ultrasonic emitters.
4. Use of poisonous baits.

Traditional methods often use plants with intense odors, but they only act temporarily to repel insects. On the other hand, indoor chemical treatments such as powders, poisonous baits, and other forms of chemicals are more effective.

Specially designed poisonous baits have proven their effectiveness, since the workers themselves carry poisonous food inside the anthill, which gradually leads to the destruction of the queen.

Get rid of worker ants and their queen

The queen is always located in the most inaccessible area of ​​the anthill, which makes its elimination difficult. Although there are traditional methods that can be used to kill the queen, they often provide only a temporary cessation of insect activity. Using products such as vinegar or boric acid may make the ants appear to disappear, but this is likely only a temporary effect due to the effect on their sensitivity to odors.

Once all the queens have been eliminated, the remaining ants will realize that their presence in a certain area has become dangerous and will likely leave your premises.

To completely and effectively solve the problem, it is recommended to contact specialists, inspect your home and carry out comprehensive treatment, which will allow you to get rid of unwanted guests once and for all.

F.A.Q.

What does a queen ant look like?

The ant queen is distinguished by its large size, which is several times larger than all other individuals of the colony. It is characterized by the presence of stripes on the abdomen and a darker chitinous shell. In addition, the presence of wings makes the front part of the body more massive. Due to the need to constantly lay eggs, the uterus is little mobile.

How many queens are there in an anthill?

Depending on the structure of the colony, there may be several queens in the anthill. If there are several interconnected nests in your apartment, each of them usually has its own queen. Such an organization complicates the process of eliminating the entire colony.

When can you catch a queen?

The optimal moment for capturing a queen ant is the period before she first lays eggs. If the colony was destroyed after the queen had already begun laying eggs, the workers might have had time to carry off and hide some of the future offspring, increasing the likelihood of a new queen emerging.