What Are Argentine Ants?

Argentine ants are small brown ants that originated in South America and are now found worldwide. They live in agricultural, natural, and urban areas.

Argentine ants are cooperative and form huge colonies. Each colony can have millions of workers and hundreds of fertile queens. The winged queens don’t swarm, mating inside the nest instead. Queens often start new nests close to the old one and share workers from the original nest.

The queens mate one time and remain fertile for their lifetime, laying as many as 60 eggs a day. The winged male ants function only to fertilize a queen and generally die quickly. The female worker Argentine ants are sterile.

Where Do They Live?

Argentine ants rarely nest inside your home, but they like to come inside to forage for food and water. They aren’t good at digging and prefer shallow nests hollowed out under debris or wood. They also like to live in nests under trees or bushes.

Small cracks in sidewalks or walls can host a nest. However, Argentine ants can adjust to a variety of circumstances and will build their nests and colonize just about anywhere, including your home and garden.

What Do They Eat?

Worker ants prefer sweet foods but will eat anything. They forage 24/7. They care for and protect insects like aphids to obtain the honeydew they secrete. The workers will also feed off some plants. They are aggressive and will destroy native ants and other insects. That changes the local ecosystem, often with negative results.

The worker ants must also forage for protein and oily foods for the queens and the larvae. Food scraps easily meet their needs.

What Do I Do If I See an Argentine Ant?

One Argentine Ant tells you that there’s a colony with millions of its nestmates nearby. If you find a nest and spray or dust it with most pesticides, you will generally increase the population. Stressed queens often lay more eggs. Putting out fast-acting bait for the workers usually kills them before they reach the queen, aside from the fact that you need different bait for the queens than you do for the workers.

A slow-acting bait that has sweet, oily, and protein ingredients kill workers and queens but takes a long time to do so. Because of the complexity in effectively eradicating an Argentine ant colony, experts recommend contacting a professional pest control company. They have the knowledge needed to apply the appropriate chemicals without endangering you, your family, and pets or destroying your landscape.

Need help with ants? Call Preventive Pest Control for fast and reliable ant control services.