Stinging ants at community garden plot - Ask Extension
Ants quickly climbed up my legs and started stinging me when I stepped on a wood chipped path in my community garden plot. They also swarmed the cotto...
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Stinging ants at community garden plot #866705
Asked May 01, 2024, 9:14 PM EDT
Ants quickly climbed up my legs and started stinging me when I stepped on a wood chipped path in my community garden plot. They also swarmed the cotton bag I had placed nearby. The ants were plentiful and moved quickly. The attached screenshot from a video shows some ants on a blade of grass for size comparison. (I tried entering this form before but I either lost it and it wiped out or it was submitted incomplete). Please help me id them and suggest how I can get rid of them.
Howard County Maryland
Expert Response
Ant identification requires examination under a microscope, since there are over 100 ant species in Maryland and very fine physical details are used to tell similar-looking species apart. Our entomologist is looking into your submission, but at the very least, we would need a clearer photo. For example, a few ants could be captured (not squished) in a container and then froze, to kill them to make them easier to photograph. Including a ruler with the photo and taking as close-up of an in-focus picture as possible, in good lighting, would also be needed.
The only way to get rid of an ant nest is to kill the queen or enough colony members that it collapses, and bait stations are designed to do that by having foraging ants find the bait (which contains an insecticide that kills them after ingestion), bring it back to the colony to share, and distributing the tainted food among the workers (and at some point, the queen). Bait stations are usually only used indoors, but some products might be labeled for outdoor use. Outdoor ant nests usually don't need baiting or other treatment since they tend not to bother people, though a defense reaction like this implies a nest is very close to where you were stepping. You might be able to just dig up that area to disturb the nest enough to get them to move elsewhere. (Something like double-sided tape or a band of petroleum jelly on the tool handle should keep them from running up it to bite/sting someone.) Ants are great garden predators, so aside from bait, use of an insecticide is not recommended, nor would spraying one near a colony work very well unless it managed to coat the only nest entrance(s).
Miri
The only way to get rid of an ant nest is to kill the queen or enough colony members that it collapses, and bait stations are designed to do that by having foraging ants find the bait (which contains an insecticide that kills them after ingestion), bring it back to the colony to share, and distributing the tainted food among the workers (and at some point, the queen). Bait stations are usually only used indoors, but some products might be labeled for outdoor use. Outdoor ant nests usually don't need baiting or other treatment since they tend not to bother people, though a defense reaction like this implies a nest is very close to where you were stepping. You might be able to just dig up that area to disturb the nest enough to get them to move elsewhere. (Something like double-sided tape or a band of petroleum jelly on the tool handle should keep them from running up it to bite/sting someone.) Ants are great garden predators, so aside from bait, use of an insecticide is not recommended, nor would spraying one near a colony work very well unless it managed to coat the only nest entrance(s).
Miri
