Why Do We See Ants in the Spring?

Residents of Northeast Ohio understand very deeply the feelings that accompany the first warm days of Spring. One of those feelings I can only describe as awakening. Birds, bugs, dog-walkers, and other animals alike experience a shift in their routine. I can see it when I run my pest control route through Barberton, Norton, Wadsworth, Akron, and surrounding areas. The robins return from migration, humans begin the work of tending to their land, and ants begin marching. 

Ants, as a nuisance pest, are truly the great socioeconomic leveler in the pest management world. In other words, they do not discriminate between half a million dollar homes and forty-thousand dollar homes. To put it simply, ants will march into structures neighboring their colony to forage for sugars and proteins at the queen’s request, regardless of how much money you spend on oatmilk lattes per month.

There exists somewhere around 9,000 to 10,000 species of ants. Some entomologists believe that that number may actually exceed 20,000 species of ants (Mallis, Klotz 635). However only about 50 species of this social insect infest homes in the United States. Here in Northeast Ohio, or specifically Summit, Medina, Stark, Wayne, and Cuyahoga counties, the most common ant species infesting homes are the humble pavement ant and the carpenter ant.

Pavement Ants

Let’s talk pavement ants first, since this is by far our most frequent service call in the spring of Northeast Ohio. The pavement ant, or tetramorium caespitum, are tiny little guys ranging from 2.5-3 millimeters long. They can appear dark reddish-brown or blackish in color (Mallis, Klotz 655). Pavement ants take up residence under or beside concrete slabs, sidewalks, driveways, foundations, in the soil, or rotting wood. Here, the queen will build a nest and begin laying eggs, sending out workers to forage for sustenance. Common areas to find pavement ants are near furnace vents, in the kitchen, under sinks, baseboards, food pantries, and wall voids.

Springtime is ripe with opportunity for the foraging pavement ant if your home happens to sit close to a colony. April and May pose a couple difficulties for pavement ants to be foraging outside: rain and unstable temperatures. So, the next best option to look for food is—you guessed it—inside your house! Think about it, a temperature controlled environment hovering around 68-72 degrees and plenty of food crumbs dropped unwittingly by human snackers and pets. It’s the perfect crime. A foraging ant will leave a trail of chemical signals called pheromones to alert the other workers nearby that they’ve found a food source. Before long, workers show up in droves to scavenge nutrients to bring home to the queen. 

Carpenter Ants

A common misconception about the Midwest’s black carpenter ant or Camponotus pennsylvaniacus, is that they eat wood. Carpenter ants use their large mandibles (pincher-like mouthparts) to excavate tunnels into wood for nesting, however the wood is not consumed. Tell-tale signs of carpenter ant infestations are little piles of the chewed up wood called frass. Frass appears as a sawdust-like material, often containing insect parts and other debris. A queen intent on starting a colony will most often find a cavity in a dead or live tree to begin laying eggs (Mallis, Klotz 650). From here, it can take a few years for a parent colony to become sustainable enough to expand and form a satellite colony. Sometimes these satellite colonies find a home within your home. Mi casa es su casa.

Now, the reason you see carpenter ants in the home during the colder months of late winter or early spring is due to the queen’s egg-laying schedule. Usually in January, after a long winter nap of inactivity, called diapause, the queen begins to lay her first eggs of the season. As these eggs develop into larvae (tiny worm-like insects) they become ravenously hungry and require lots of nutrients to continue development. This triggers foraging activity of the worker ants to meet the requirements of the rapidly developing larvae (Mallis, Klotz 651). If the queen hasn’t already set up shop in your home, her workers–in search of protein or carbohydrate rich food sources–may end up scurrying across your countertop. 

Solutions

Homeowners, renters, businesses, and employees alike should keep in mind that basic sanitation practices (i.e. frequent vacuuming and mopping of floors, cleaning countertops, keeping food items in closed containers, taking out garbage regularly) will help mitigate an ant infestation from becoming overwhelming.  There are easy environmental alterations you can practice as well. Things like sealing cracks and gaps in your windows, doors, and gas/AC conduits will help exclude ants from entering the structure. Others include raking up all organic matter and damp leaves from around the foundation. Trimming back tree branches and vegetation from touching the structure will do wonders to eliminate potential avenues for ants to enter the structure. 

But, of course, we know that ants are persistent. They’ve been on this planet approximately 140 million years longer than us hominids. When the ants persist despite your efforts, give us a call.  

Works Cited

John Klotz, Ph.D, The Handbook of Pest Control - Mallis, Chapter 11 Ants