Flying ant day is not a plague, it’s simply courtship
You may have noticed something unusual in the air this week.
I am not referring to the peculiar feeling that swept across the nation when England won a penalty shootout. Nor do I mean the eerily long heatwave. Instead, it was something far more irritating, and almost as inexplicable: “flying ant day”.
On Wednesday, not long after the first (brief) rain shower for weeks fell, millions of insects took to the skies, seemingly all at once.
Nobody was safe. Not commuters, not gardeners, not even Wimbledon. On Henman Hill, fans flapped at their picnics. On Court One, Caroline Wozniacki waved her racquet at the ants in fury, on her way to a shock second-round defeat.
It manages to take us by surprise every year, but flying ant day is, in fact, a seasonal occurrence. In thousandsstrong black ant colonies, often found under paving stones or in the cracks of our lawns during the spring and early summer, fertilised eggs develop into workers, but virgin queens are also produced. These would-be monarchs (princesses) are winged, as are the males from unfertilised eggs (drones).
When the weather is hot and humid – there is no set date – the drones and princesses take off, looking to mate mid-air. Some are instantly eaten by opportunistic swifts or gulls, some go a metre or two before finding their partner, and some travel surprisingly far. When it happens, though, they drop to the ground, lose their wings, and a new colony is born.
So perhaps we can be a little more respectful before stamping and swatting our way through flying ant day 2019. It’s not a Biblical plague, but a courtship. Leave the queens be.