Summer season is flying ant season
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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?
The local events can last for anything from a day to a few hours. They do tend to all take off at the same time if conditions are right.
The exact same time only?
Yeah, so much so that they get picked up on the weather radars over London. You can actually see, because London has a massive population of black ants, and when they all take off, if the conditions are right over a large area, they'll all take off at the exact same time. Now, most of the time, it's very localised.
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.
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.
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Chapters
5 chapters
1
What is flying ant season and why is it significant?
0:01–2:51
2
What triggers the emergence of flying ants?
2:51–3:32
3
Are flying ants different species from common garden ants?
3:32–5:20
4
What environmental conditions favor flying ant season?
5:20–7:28
5
How do flying ants reproduce and establish new colonies?
7:28–8:43