What Are Argentine Ants?
Argentine ants are small brown ants that originated in South America and are now found worldwide. They live in agricultural, natural, and urban areas.
Argentine ants are cooperative and form huge colonies. Each colony can have millions of workers and hundreds of fertile queens. Although the queens have wings, they don’t swarm. They mate inside the nest. Queens often start new nests close to the old one and share workers from the original nest.
The queens mate only one time and remain fertile afterward for their lifetime, laying as many as 60 eggs a day. The winged male ants function only to fertilize a queen and generally die quickly. The female worker Argentine ants are sterile.
Where Do They Live?
Argentine ants rarely nest inside your home, but they like to come inside to forage for food and water.
…show more content…
However, Argentine ants can adjust to a variety of circumstances and will build their nests and colonize just about anywhere, including your home and garden.
What Do They Eat?
The worker ants prefer sweet foods, but will eat anything. They forage 24/7. They care for and protect insects like aphids to obtain the honeydew they secrete. The workers will also feed off some plants. They are aggressive and will destroy native ants and other insects. That changes the local ecosystem, often with negative results.
The worker ants must also forage for protein and oily foods for the queens and the larvae. Food scraps easily meet their needs.
What Do I Do If I See an Argentine Ant?
One Argentine Ant tells you that there’s a colony with millions of its companions nearby. If you find a nest and spray or dust it with most pesticides, you will generally increase the population. Stressed queens often lay more eggs. Putting out fast-acting bait for the workers usually kills them before they reach the queen, aside from the fact that you need different bait for the queens than you do for the