Little Black Ant

Little black ant Workers are about 1/8 inch long, slender, shiny black, sometimes dark brown with two nodes in the petiole and a 12-segmented antennae with a three segmented club

Little is known of the life history of this ant. Colonies are moderately sized to large, containing up to 2,000 workers and many queens.

Black ants are active both during the day and at night, often carrying food back to its nest. Did you know that ants can carry 20 times their body weight? They live at the edges of forests and near human homes. Black ant nests are usually built underground, but we can see the small domes that are the tops of their homes in the dirt aboveground. Sometimes these ants will also build nests in rotting wood or trees. Black ants often eat whatever ‘human food’ they can find: sweet fruit cores, bits of meat, cooked vegetables, or even crumbs of bread. They will also eat other insects that they find dead.

Sweets, including honeydew they are sometimes found feeding on honeydew from insects infesting houseplants and live and dead insects. Nesting Sites: In soil, forming small craters, especially in lawns. They also nest in soil under stones, bricks, sidewalks and other concealed sites, as well as rotting logs and stumps.

Life Cycle :Ants live together in colonies. Each colony has at least 1 queen ant. The queen lays eggs that the worker ants will guard and care for. Like honeybees, worker ants look for food, feed the young, and defent the colony against enemies.

At night workers will move the eggs and the young larvae deeper underground to protect them from the cold. Most of these eggs will hatch into grubs that become worker adults. It usually takes about 10 days for the eggs to hatch. Some ants have wings; when the colony gets too big, these ants will fly away, mate, and start a new colony.

Management : Little black ant colonies in and around buildings generally are not numerous. They can usually be controlled by limited insecticide applications or the use of baits. Surveys should be done inside and outside to locate all nests. Outdoor colonies can be treated with a residual insecticide by drenching the nest sites, using a compressed sprayer. Nests in wall voids can be treated by injecting aerosol through cracks and crevices and around baseboards.

Prevention : Protect your food stuffs,Fill all the cracks, Find and remove any debris.

If you ever have any bug related issues in New York City, feel free to call us either at Beyond Pest Control. Once again, and I can’t stress this enough we are on call twenty four hours a day seven days a week to kill those bugs, we aren’t kidding whether you call us at 9 am or midnight we will be available to take your call and either get rid of the bug infestation, or answer any questions you may have concerning the bug issue. I can honestly guarantee that there will be someone to answer that call. We make it our business to make you bug free!

If you have any questions about how to get rid of ants check out the rest of our website or go to our blog at http://nypestpro.blogspot.com.

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