A longtime invasive ant has been making the rounds in Florida over the past few decades.
And with summer coming up, it’s prime season for these ants to spread.
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According to the University of Florida researchers, these “tawny crazy ants” are named for their reddish-brown color and the way they zip around — “quickly and erratically.”
However, they’re especially notorious for their “super colonies” — communities with several queens and connected nests spread out over a large area.
This can be a huge problem for homeowners with infestations, as it’s not a matter of just exterminating a single nest.
If one nest is killed off, it can usually be replaced so long as the original nest is still intact.
“We had a big infestation in a golf course community, and they were actually coming from a wooded area near the golf course...” said Dr. Rudolf Scheffrahn, a professor of entomology at the University of Florida. “You can spray the infested area, but it doesn’t kill the colony.”
Homeowners with particularly nasty infestations have even reported that the ground appears to be moving thanks to the sheer volume of ants in any one nest, researchers explained.
“I first encountered them in West Palm Beach in an FPL site,” Scheffrahn told News 6. “They were foraging into a building there by the millions. They had sprayed the building, so all the ants were dead in there, but I couldn’t trace the foraging trails back to the nest.”
While these ants are native to Brazil, they were introduced to Colombia in the mid-1900s to stem populations of poisonous snakes and other ants. UF experts explained they later popped up in the southeast U.S., including places like Florida and Texas.
In the Sunshine State, the following counties have either reported or confirmed cases of tawny crazy ants:
Scheffrahn warned that it’s incredibly difficult to get rid of an infestation once you have one, but they fortunately don’t pose a direct threat.
“They have no sting. Their bite is very, very lame,” he said. “The real problem is the nuisance once they get in your property, in your house. Again, they come in massive numbers — overtake everything.”
Worse yet, Scheffrahn said that some pest control companies might not treat the source of the problem.
“Most pest control companies just want to treat the property where they’re getting paid,” he explained. “And they don’t necessarily want to expand beyond that because that’s not their mission. Their mission is to make the customer there happy. So it’s kind of an area-wide issue with controlling these things.”
Luckily, Scheffrahn told News 6 that these ants tend to be “ephemeral,” meaning they don’t stick around for too long.
“They come in one spot. They take over. They disappear,” he said. “They’re probably in competition with other ants that take over their habitat — probably big-headed ants, maybe to a lesser extent fire ants... And then in a year or two, they’re gone.”
In communities dealing with such infestations, homeowners are urged to do the following:
- Eliminate food, water and shelter that could encourage ants to seek out your property.
- De-clutter and remove debris or other unneeded items from your property.
- Establish regular trash removal.
- If you have had pest control performed on your property, don’t hose ants off the pavement area, as this can also wash away the treatment. Instead, use a blower.
- Prepare to pay for frequent pest control service.
- Be careful about “self-treating,” as your efforts could counteract those of a professional pest control service. For example, spraying an insecticide over a bait could render the bait ineffective.
For more information on these ants, visit the University of Florida Institute for Food and Agricultural Sciences’ website here.
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