My pastures are home to three or four colonies of prairie mound ants (formica spp.), they nest in good sized mounds of duff about 18 inches in diameter and from 12 to 18 inches high. Fairly common on the Montana prairie with an odd symbiotic relationship with aphids.
I think yours are definitely weaver ants. My weaver ants say hi to your weaver ants. (Or at least I hope they do. Sorry if they're declaring war instead, it's hard to tell!)
We recently endured ant season here, so I'm unfortunately feeding some of them poison. And I met and avoided a red velvet ant, which is also known as a cow killer, and has an extremely painful sting.
Oh, thank goodness you avoided the red velvet ant -- they sound like red velvet cake, but I take it the similarities end there.
Another post I'm thinking about writing is one about ladybug masses, about which there's been a new study. It's hard for me to confess this but in one house I lived in, first we got a few ladybugs, which were charming, and then a few more, which were a slight inconvenience, and then finally absolutely swarms of them, a sort of writhing mass. And ... I ended up killing them? Or at least a lot of them? I'm not sure what I'd do now, probably not quite the same thing (I think I'd try moving them first) but yes, definitely with ants, and sometimes with other creatures -- it's a balance. One doesn't want writhing masses of anything in one's home, or stinging ant hills in one's yard.
in the late seventies I shared a home on the flood planes of the Espanola Valley, not only with ravenous mosquitos, but with fire ants. They dwealt in sprawling, domed condominiums which for the most part were scrupulously avoided. Even proximal association risked one or more of their warriors crawling up to your thigh before clamping their jaws on your softest flesh, and injecting their poison. The result was as though someone had siezed you with vise-grips and then began to twist it. The experience left you with a mounded welt cruely reminiscent of the ant mound itself.
I tried soaking a few mounds with gasoline and setting them afire. It was satisfying to see the ants evacuate their homes--each mound had multiple openings. But it was clear that the practice was utterly futile. So I returned to the uneasy truce.
My pastures are home to three or four colonies of prairie mound ants (formica spp.), they nest in good sized mounds of duff about 18 inches in diameter and from 12 to 18 inches high. Fairly common on the Montana prairie with an odd symbiotic relationship with aphids.
https://www.insectidentification.org/insect-description.php?identification=Formica-Ant
They don't bother me, so I don't bother them.
These are the same as what I call Thatcher Ants, aren't they?
Exacta Mondo!!
Ha!
I’m hoping mine are weaver ants, building homes out of the happiest and greenest of building materials!
I think yours are definitely weaver ants. My weaver ants say hi to your weaver ants. (Or at least I hope they do. Sorry if they're declaring war instead, it's hard to tell!)
We recently endured ant season here, so I'm unfortunately feeding some of them poison. And I met and avoided a red velvet ant, which is also known as a cow killer, and has an extremely painful sting.
Oh, thank goodness you avoided the red velvet ant -- they sound like red velvet cake, but I take it the similarities end there.
Another post I'm thinking about writing is one about ladybug masses, about which there's been a new study. It's hard for me to confess this but in one house I lived in, first we got a few ladybugs, which were charming, and then a few more, which were a slight inconvenience, and then finally absolutely swarms of them, a sort of writhing mass. And ... I ended up killing them? Or at least a lot of them? I'm not sure what I'd do now, probably not quite the same thing (I think I'd try moving them first) but yes, definitely with ants, and sometimes with other creatures -- it's a balance. One doesn't want writhing masses of anything in one's home, or stinging ant hills in one's yard.
An infestation of ladybugs would be unpleasant. No judging here.
in the late seventies I shared a home on the flood planes of the Espanola Valley, not only with ravenous mosquitos, but with fire ants. They dwealt in sprawling, domed condominiums which for the most part were scrupulously avoided. Even proximal association risked one or more of their warriors crawling up to your thigh before clamping their jaws on your softest flesh, and injecting their poison. The result was as though someone had siezed you with vise-grips and then began to twist it. The experience left you with a mounded welt cruely reminiscent of the ant mound itself.
I tried soaking a few mounds with gasoline and setting them afire. It was satisfying to see the ants evacuate their homes--each mound had multiple openings. But it was clear that the practice was utterly futile. So I returned to the uneasy truce.