This article focuses on queen ants. It starts by asking when queen ants come out.

Ants have a highly structured community where different responsibilities are shared. This is very interesting as ants play an important role in nature.

Our entire discussion will seek to provide you with the right answers.

What Are Queen Ants?

Just by the name alone, queen ants sound like an authority figure that directs the activities of other ants right?

Well, that’s not entirely true. The queen ant sustains or perpetuates an ant colony by reproduction. In other words, the queen is the mother of all the ants in an ant colony.

How do queen ants come about? These ants emerge from specially fed larvae. One surprising fact about ants is that there may be a single queen or multiple queens within one colony. This looks like chaos right?

Well, remember we earlier said queens do not have the real authority or direct other ants.

The role of queen ants is to serve rather than lead. They carry out two key roles in the colony. The first involves exiting their birth colony and starting a new one all by herself. The queen finds a good nesting site and lays her first eggs.

This begins a life-long process of egg-laying to support the colony. The queen perpetuates the ant colony ensuring that new members are replenished.

What Time Do Queen Ants Come Out?

Emergence or coming out of queen ants happens when they exit their birth colony to establish their own. The queen embarks on this journey with the help of a group of workers.

Before all this happens, virgin winged ant queens will leave their nests and go in search of winged male ants from other colonies.

The purpose here is to mate. Having met and successfully mated with a winged male both lose their wings. Now, the fertilized wingless ant queens look for suitable nesting spots to launch their colony.

The ant queen lays eggs which mostly hatch into worker ants who also play a critical role in the survival of the colony. Virgin queens are only produced when there’s enough supply of worker ants.

The production of virgin queens is meant to further expand the colony.

The same cycle happens when these virgin female queens are mature enough to start their own colonies. They fly out in search of mates from other colonies and the process repeats itself.

Locating Their Nests

Ant nests can be found in many areas. These range from areas of grass and dirt, underground, in trees, or beneath rocks. Queen ants take their time to find suitable spots to start their colony after coming out of their initial birth colonies.

How Long do Queen Ants Live?

Compared to other castes within the ant colony, queen ants have a much longer lifespan.

These members of royalty are known to live as long as 30 years! This is quite surprising because other members within the colony such as workers have a shorter lifespan of at most a few years.

Knowing Where to Look

If you’re faced with a recurring ant infestation around your property, now you know why it won’t go away. Getting rid of an ant infestation may prove difficult due to several reasons.

Part of these includes not using effective strategies.

However, the obvious reason has to do with the source. Ant queens live as long as some people do and will always ensure they replenish the colony’s population. You face an even greater problem when faced with a super ant colony.

Such colonies result when multiple ant colonies unite or band together.

In this case, there’ll be multiple queens involved. The more the queens within an ant colony, the greater their numbers are. So, your infestation issues may never be over if the underlying causes aren’t resolved.

Calling the Professionals

Due to the critical role played by ant queens in perpetuating their colonies, it will serve you best to seek professional help with your ant issues.

Pest management services are fully equipped to identify a problem and bring it to a logical end.

A variety of treatment strategies are adopted to exterminate ants. When these are gotten rid of, the colony practically comes to an end.

Preventive Measures

Part of the several ways to fight back a possible ant infestation is by adopting preventive measures. This doesn’t have to wait until queen ants come calling. You’ll need to be proactive by locating and sealing all possible entry points.

Ants come into your property and home from the outdoors. They’ll use all available entrances they find to get in.

These will need to be shut off completely using caulk or similar methods.

  • Eliminate All Food Sources

Having successfully established a colony, queen ants stay back while worker ants move to great lengths to scavenge for food. These range from insects, food crumbs, and whatever they can find. Now, there’s an ample supply of these at almost every home.

How you store your food determines whether you’ll have ant-related problems or not.

We recommend properly storing all foods in tight containers. These can’t be easily reached. Your dining areas need to be cleaned after every meal and spills from sugary substances or drinks properly cleaned off.

Your garbage can may also serve to attract ants. When emptied, ensure it’s frequently washed to eliminate possible food particles which may cling to it.

DIY Methods

There are tons of effective DIY strategies for ant control you can adopt. Having successfully located or spotted an ant colony, you can adopt any strategy you feel comfortable with. One of such includes the use of boric acid as bait.

Boric acid can either be applied directly in its powder form or a solution is made which is then applied to cardboard sheets and placed near the colony. Whether ingested or touched, this adversely affects ants.

It poisons when ingested and also degrades the exoskeletons of ants.

They take this back to the colony which in turn achieves a significant impact by poisoning. Another method to consider includes digging or opening up a part of their nests and pouring a solution of soapy water.

We’ve seen that queen ants come out when they’re mature and ready to start their colony. Their need to come out is also driven by their desire to find suitable mating partners.

This happens once and leads to the creation of a new colony.

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