Flying ants swarming city skies conducting a mating dance
Romance is in the air ... literally.
Swarms of ants have taken to the skies in Metro Vancouver as the winged queens — followed by suitor drones entranced by their irresistible royal come-hither pheromone — lift off on a “nuptial flight” to breed, build a new nest, and start a new colony.
And yes, the ants are mating in the air.
Some call it “flying ant day” but it’s more like flying ant season, as the nuptial dance can last up to a week.
“Every type of ant has winged reproductives in their colony that will come out and swarm. Different types of ants in different parts of the world will swarm more than once a year but most, especially in our climate, once a year they have a two-hour window, one-day window or three-day window where it is just crazy,” said pest expert Mike Londry of Westside Pest Control. “People in their driveways, their patios and even in their homes, depending on the type of ants they are dealing with, are overwhelmed by these flying insects.”
The female ants will lose their wings soon after mating and begin to build a nest. The male drones die shortly after their flight — regardless if they mate with the queen or not.
“They live their whole lives in the nest waiting for this moment — and then they die,” Londry said.
On Wednesday, when the swarms were at their thickest in Metro Vancouver, it was a little like Christmas Day for Danielle Hoefele, a pest management graduate student at Simon Fraser University.
Hoefele took to Twitter to boast about the jar full of queens she collected to use in her lab research on ant trail pheromones.
“They all had their wings off — we are trying to start little colonies in our labs — and usually when they have their wings off that means they have mated.” Hoefele said. “We’re going to try to start little nests. You can take each queen and put her in a test tube with a little water and sugar and eventually she’ll lay eggs. Those will hatch into workers and you’ll have a very small ant nest.
“We are mainly interested in pest species, and these are not pest species, but we are interested in the science.”
While a swarm of mating ants can be unpleasant, Londry says it’s probably nothing to worry about.
Only if you find discarded wings inside your house should you call pest control, because Londry says that means there is likely a healthy colony or two in your home that needs to be eradicated.