|
Pest Control Services |
All photos and material on this page are the
exclusive property of P.C.S. Gulf Islands. Copy write protected 2001.©
Use of this material for any purpose is prohibited without the written
permission of P.C.S. Gulf Islands.
We welcome enquiries from students and teachers.
| The winged females emerge from nests in
the spring. They will try to mate then seek a wet piece of wood to establish a new nest. She will then pull of her wings and burrow into the wood where she will spend the rest of her life (15 to 20 years) laying eggs. She has enough food stored in her body, including the wing muscles, to feed her first babies until they are mature and can bring back food for her and the next batch of newborns. The blue lines in the background are spaced 1/4 inch. This ant is about 3/4 of an inch long, nose to wing tips. She was captured shortly after emerging from a nest in the ceiling of a home, April 30, 2001. She was alive while modeling for this photo and would not stay in the center of the lens. (Note: one of her antennas is missing) Magnification: approximately 10 times |
 |
| Like many of her sisters, this potential queen died while
trying to escape from the interior of a home near a window. Winged
ants can not fly well and they usually move towards outside light.
Note the smoothly rounded thorax (mid section) and the single node or
spike between the two body segments. The legs are a rusty red
color. Workers in a nest will have similar characteristics but
they will not have wings and are smaller. There are usually 5 different sizes of ants in a
carpenter ant nest. Magnification: approximately 10 times |
 |
| Reproductive males with wings emerge from nests in
the spring to mate with the future queens. Once they have
fertilized a queen, they all die, probably of starvation. The
males do no work and are often pushed out of the nest by female workers
at mating time. Males are smaller than reproductive females.
The abdomen is long and slender. The head quite small and the
mandibles are very small. They can not chew wood. They
are harmless to the structure of a home but are usually the worst
nuisance because so many of them are obvious flying toward windows
during mating season. Their presence inside a home indicates there is at
least one well established nest in the structure. Magnification: approximately 13 times |
 |
| Carpenter ants have a single node between the thorax and
abdomen. It is quite visible using a magnifying glass.
Magnification: approximately 60 times |
 |
| Sexy Eyes.....If you study these
girls long enough you can eventually get to love them. They are very dedicated mothers and will lay about 70,000 eggs during
their lifetime of 15 to 20 years. Once the first small brood is old
enough to gather food, the queen does nothing but lay eggs. She never
leaves her nest. When the nest gets too crowded, the workers will carry
larvae to a new satellite nest where they are fed and cared for until
they develop into adults. Magnification: approximately 60 times |
 |
| .........and da hip bone's connected to da leg bone.
All 6 legs on an ant are connected closely to an area at the rear of
the |
 |
| Hairs on the abdomen are another distinctive
characteristics of carpenter ants.
Magnification: approximately 60 times |
 |
| A distinguishing characteristic of this ant is the obvious
antennae elbow.
Magnification: approximately 60 times |
 |
| Different species of ants can be identified by the number
of antennae segments.
Magnification: approximately 60 times |
 |
| The antennae of ants are sense organs having
the function of touch and smell. They will often follow the pheromone
trail laid out by other ants by touching their antennae to the surface
they are crawling on. If the antennae becomes contaminated with a foreign substance such as a pesticide, they will attempt to clean them with their front legs. Ants leaving nests in a building that has had a pest control treatment are often observed performing this grooming behavior. |
  |