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Chapter 1: What is flying ant season and why is it significant?
The Clare Byrne Show on Newstalk. With Aviva Insurance.
Keeping with summer weather, there is one, I was going to say person, but it's not a person. There is one insect out there that is absolutely living its best life right now. And Collie Ennis, Biodiversity Officer, Trinity College, Dublin, is joining me now to tell me more. Flying ants, hot, humid conditions. They are, they're in their element.
Yeah, it's flying ant season. A lot of people kind of call it flying ant day, but it is a season. So what's happening now is it's the queen ants are all getting ready and geared up and taking to the wing for their nuptial flight.
So what are we talking about here when we say flying ants? Are they a different species to the ants we normally see roaming around our gardens or our patios? Or are they just those ants with wings?
So they are just those ants, but the queen, the hive creates these new queens. So they'll be able to take to the wing and set up new ant nests elsewhere. It's their form of reproduction of spreading their population around the place. It's a very clever way of getting away from existing nests.
And when do they generally appear in Ireland? And are there certain environmental conditions that really encourage the season?
Yeah, it's hot and humid weather. So that's why they're all taking off at the moment. If you're walking down the street outside there, you can actually see in the cracks in the pavement, bits of dirt that's been pushed up by the worker ants. And what they're doing is they're actually kind of clearing the runway for those queens to get out. to have a good run off and then take off and fly.
And when they're on the wing, then they'll mate with the male ants. The male ants will die. The queen ants then land on the ground. And for our typical black garden ant, she could live another 10, 20 years under your patio and form a huge colony that will, you know, live on. And then next year, make more ants, queen ants to do the same thing over and over again.
And do they all tend to emerge at the same time? And how long does that sort of flying ant season generally last for?
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Chapter 2: What triggers the emergence of flying ants?
So you could get, you know, a couple of roads or a street that will just have the right conditions for them to go. And then maybe the following week they might go, you know, a couple of miles down the road. A separate bunch will go off at the same time. Why are they so fond of London? Well, any cities, they do really well because if you look at it, do you ever see an ant farm for kids?
It's like two panes of glass with some sand packed in and you put the queen ant in and she forms a colony. What we've created in our back gardens with patios and the likes, you know, it's that perfect conditions, just slabs down on the ground with lovely sand underneath it. And that's perfect for the queen ants to go.
Chapter 3: Are flying ants different species from common garden ants?
And when they fly off, they'll land in a place like that, dig down and set up a colony. So you can imagine that on a massive scale, like Dublin, London, Cork, Galway. That's why so many of them take up residence there.
I mean, how would you recognise one? Is there a particular sound or a particular look or a particular sort of number?
Well, if you're outside a bar on a sunny evening, you might find one landing in your pint because that's how you recognise them. I like them last night. They're very similar to what they look very wasp like, except they'd be smaller and completely brown or black.
Are they dangerous at all or are they just a bit of a pain, a bit of a nuisance?
They're just a nuisance. They're not dangerous. They won't sting you. They don't bite. They carry germs? They don't, no, no. They're actually quite clean little creatures. The great thing about them is it's like one of our natural wonders that people don't really get to see. Now, we have our starling murmurations and we have... you know, the basking sharks come in in the summer.
But this is another one of these summer wonders that, you know, if you stop and have a look at it, it's actually quite amazing. And when these ants all take off and when they do take off in these massive numbers, they do so to kind of overwhelm predators.
But they are a great source of food for all the swallows, the swifts, the seagulls, all the creatures that really need a kind of a summer boost at this time of year. They're a fantastic source of protein for them.
All right. I absolutely hate blue bottles. Right. This is my summer nemesis. And I spend an unnatural amount of time. I'm not going to be lying to you. I kill them off. But they do. They do perform an important job, don't they?
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Chapter 4: What environmental conditions favor flying ant season?
As do these flying ants.
Yeah, everything does. I mean, like when it comes to blue bottles and flies, I mean, their reproductive cycle is, you know, largely based on breaking down dead matter. So, you know, that's in the wild. That's what they do. Otherwise, if we didn't have flies and ants and creatures like these, you'd have a lot of carcasses of animals just sitting out and kind of rotten in fields.
And these creatures break them down and they're kind of nature's recyclers. So they are hugely important.
That's why I need to put down the bath then, do I? Yeah, exactly. I think the fear too that people have is that they'll come into their house or that they'll set up a nest in their house or that there'll be a swarming incident in their house. Is that likely?
Yeah, well, I've seen people, you know, with ant nests that are just outside the patio or, you know, around that area where some of the queens have emerged and swarmed into a house. It's very rare. More than likely what you tend to get is when a nest is established, you get these kind of scout ants. And they're the guys who are sent out to look for food.
A juicy morsel, a dead slug or a dead worm in the wild, something like that. And they'll go back, leaving a chemical trail to the nest. And then all the workers will come out and collect that food.
Now, if the kids have stuffed a Mars bar down the back of the couch and you don't know about it and this scout aunt is out and he smells that sweet source of food and goes back to the nest, that's when you get loads of them coming into your house. Now, the key to stopping that is just really to, obviously, don't leave the Mars bar down the back of the couch if you can avoid it.
Don't give the child the Mars bar in the first place. Exactly. To break those chemicals signals, you just have to kind of give the floor a bit of a wipe. And that will actually stop them because they won't have anywhere to follow or to realise that there's a food source there.
Okay. Are the numbers changing in Ireland at all? And do urban areas, you mentioned the cities there, do they experience them quite differently then to the rural areas?
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Chapter 5: How do flying ants reproduce and establish new colonies?
Some like our wood ants are quite rare. We've got around 20, 25 species of ants in the country and we're probably going to end up getting more because as the climate warms and as we kind of, ants are great travellers. Like a queen ant can hop on a shipping container from mainland Europe of which there's many more populations of ants over there and come over to Ireland easily.
So yeah, one to watch down the line.
And are they always harmless?
Not always harmless, but we're okay here.
And are the non-harmless ones as fond of jumping on those shipping containers?
Unfortunately, yes, unfortunately. The fire ants and the red ants are kind of the nastier ones that you'd want to watch out for. So I suppose like anything that you'd see that's unusual, you can always report it to the National Biodiversity Data Centre and one of the experts will have a look. Okay, but otherwise, leave them be. Yeah, leave them alone and they will leave you alone.
And it will pass. Yes. Colleen Ennis, Biodiversity Officer with Trinity College Dublin. Thanks so much for that.
You're very welcome.
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