Given ants live almost as long as people used to live, you have to kill the queen (otherwise she makes more forager ants if you kill them when you see them) so you have to be sneaky by baiting the food with a slow-acting
poison (such as a sprinkling of boric acid on the chicken meat bait).
The forager ants bring the boric acid back to the nest both on their bodies and in the food they regurgitate back to feed the queen and her pupae.
But if you kill the queen, then what do the rest of the ants do for the remaining 5 to 10 to 30 years (depending on the species) of their lives?
Do the workers still infest your house & forage for food without the queen?
Given ants live almost as long as people used to live, you have to kill the queen (otherwise she makes more forager ants if you kill them when you see them) so you have to be sneaky by baiting the food with a slow-acting
poison (such as a sprinkling of boric acid on the chicken meat bait).
The forager ants bring the boric acid back to the nest both on their bodies and in the food they regurgitate back to feed the queen and her pupae.
But if you kill the queen, then what do the rest of the ants do for the remaining 5 to 10 to 30 years (depending on the species) of their lives?
Do the workers still infest your house & forage for food without the queen?
Given ants live almost as long as people used to live, you have to kill the >queen (otherwise she makes more forager ants if you kill them when you see >them) so you have to be sneaky by baiting the food with a slow-acting
poison (such as a sprinkling of boric acid on the chicken meat bait).
The forager ants bring the boric acid back to the nest both on their bodies >and in the food they regurgitate back to feed the queen and her pupae.
But if you kill the queen, then what do the rest of the ants do for the >remaining 5 to 10 to 30 years (depending on the species) of their lives?
Do the workers still infest your house & forage for food without the queen?
the worker ants do not usually live very long when
compared to the queen. it depends upon which ant
caste you are examining.
The forager ants bring the boric acid back to the nest both on their bodies >> and in the food they regurgitate back to feed the queen and her pupae.
But if you kill the queen, then what do the rest of the ants do for the
remaining 5 to 10 to 30 years (depending on the species) of their lives?
Do the workers still infest your house & forage for food without the queen?
it depends upon the ant species, some are more persistent
and can recover from the death of a queen and others will
not.
but for most ant species they might be around for a while
but eventually they'll die off as the colony disintegrates.
remember that for most ants the queen is what drives the
hive and when she's gone it will not persist too long. if
there is no young to feed the foragers will not work as hard
and there won't be replacements for those who are lost so
the colony will implode. the colony may also be raided by
other ants or animals.
I guess that means that one colony will likely fall apart after the queen
is poisoned by the boric acid - and the workers will lose interest in the nest or be conquered by another species.
i see that Wilson has another more recent book
on ants called Tales from the Ant World which looks to
be a more conversational and lighter book. so i've now
requested that from the library so i can have something
to read. i need a good book and this will likely do
quite well... :)
Given ants live almost as long as people used to live, you have to
kill the queen (otherwise she makes more forager ants if you kill
them when you see them) so you have to be sneaky by baiting the food
with a slow-acting poison (such as a sprinkling of boric acid on the
chicken meat bait).
The forager ants bring the boric acid back to the nest both on their
bodies and in the food they regurgitate back to feed the queen and
her pupae.
But if you kill the queen, then what do the rest of the ants do for
the remaining 5 to 10 to 30 years (depending on the species) of their
lives?
Do the workers still infest your house & forage for food without the
queen?
But I didn't see explicitly the answer to the question, which is probably that the colony will disperse, but the workers will remain alive for years.
I don't know the answer to your question. All I know is when I see
ants in the house I put out a few Terro liquid ant baits and after they
empty those I don't see them again until next year.
also think about just general mass and how things tend to
go in life. the smaller something is that is alive the
faster it tends to live and then dies.
in ant species i think that is also appropriate for a
generality even if it doesn't apply 100%. so the tiny
ants will probably only last a short while.
since you seem to have an interest in ants check out
the book The Ants from Holldobler and Wilson and by
check out i mean request it through your local library.
it's big, it's heavy, it's got a ton of information.
it will help you id different species.
The main question, given ants live as long as your pets do, is what stops
the foragers from foraging & what eventually kills them off over time.
On page 291 when Holldobler & Wilson talk about the stages of colony
growth, it's instructive when they say "colonies of all known ant species
are perennial. Like flowering plants, they issue a crop of seeds, then
return to an interval of purely vegetative (i.e., worker) growth."
On page 629 Wilson describes how when he reduced a population of 10,000 workers to only 236 in number, he determined the four year old colony reverted to a size-frequency distribution of a young colony instead.
This adaptive demography implies that we must kill off the queen and not
just the foraging ants, but unfortunately the words "boric acid" don't
occur anywhere in the text, nor does "borax" for that endeavor.
In a hint to what happens after the queen is killed, on page 369 they
discuss how dangerous the altruistic life is of foragers, averaging about
14 days for the Idaho harvester Pogonomyrmex owyheei and an average of 0.06 deaths per worker foraging hour for the California harvester Pogonomyrmex californicus simply due to the inherent dangers of conflict & predation.
However, on page 1239 they discuss how some ant species (such as granivores in Death Valley) store food to last them a dozen years of drought, which implies we might not get the queen with a single boric acid ant bait trap after all.
This is backed up on page 465 which says the laying queen can obtain nutrients from salivary secretions of her own larvae.
It seems that it may not be a sure bet to lay out a single trap to kill the queen as a result of that information but if the queen is killed off, then
no more workers will be produced for that colony, where it seems the foragers' normal lifespan will likely be limited more by the dangers of predators and other colonies as you mentioned earlier in this thread than
by the fact they can live as long as your typical pet's natural lifespan.
at different stages the colony may also have a preference
for what it will take as bait. when raising a lot of young
they may want more protein and fats and other times more
sugars and liquids.
they're facinating creatures and very successful. the old
biblical saying about study their ways and be wise is still
very apt.
if you can kill off the workers early when a colony is
first getting going you can take it out, but you have to
be pretty dilligent. the queen can feed herself eggs
for a while, but if you can keep the foragers from being
able to bring back water they will have a much harder
time of it.
I'm still trying to figure out why the bait needs to be wet as I noticed
that ants have salivary glands outlined physiologically in that last text.
I'm just wondering what happens to the ants that didn't eat the bait as
that can't be the only foraging party that the queen sent out that day.
Here are some images of the bait traps I made with chicken meat.
songbird <songbird@anthive.com> wrote:
they're facinating creatures and very successful. the old
biblical saying about study their ways and be wise is still
very apt.
I agree with you that we have to understand their nature as most people I think just kill the workers which simply stimulates the queen to make more.
I'm still trying to figure out why the bait needs to be wet as I noticed
that ants have salivary glands outlined physiologically in that last text.
Also I'm trying to figure out the optimum ratio of boric acid, although I note that many people use borax (which is essentially a diluted form).
I'm still trying to figure out why the bait needs to be wet as I noticed
that ants have salivary glands outlined physiologically in that last text.
for the smaller common ants i think the food the
foragers actually consume is liquid (nectar from flowers
and sometimes honeydew produced by aphids or other sucking
bugs).
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