Ant eggs are an important component for every growing respectable ant colony and determine the rate at which the population and thus the colony expands. After all, a colony can’t survive without new workers if it doesn’t generate endless egg batches, so if you discover ant eggs in your home or yard, you have a big ant problem.
These eggs hatch into swarms of tiny ants determined to build a colony and forage for food. So is it feasible to target their eggs before they mature into larvae?
What Do Ant Eggs Look like?
Before we can get started with the destroying of the ant eggs, we have to know what they look like first. It is easy to mistake ant eggs for small pebbles, tiny grains, rice, or even beans depending on their species.
In general, ant eggs look white, small, and oval-shaped though they can vary from species to species with a staggering 15,700 named species of ants. Some species may have slightly larger 2-3 mm eggs while it's more common to see 1 mm eggs.
What Color Are Ant Eggs?
Ant eggs are generally colored opaque white or translucent in color. This coloration can vary slightly from species to species as well as the development stage of the egg. Their whitish or translucent appearance can be attributed to their soft gelatinous texture which helps camouflage them, hidden within the protective environment of the ant colony
This coloration not only protects the eggs from predators but also from direct sunlight while allowing them to absorb heat and maintain a consistent internal temperature to facilitate egg development.
In addition to being small, a notable feature of ant eggs is their smooth and shiny surface. Lacking texture, this smoothness helps protect the eggs and also allows them to stick together when laid in clusters. Furthermore, the gel-like consistency helps maintain moisture and protect the developing embryo.
The appearance of ant eggs can still vary somewhat between ant species, so there may be subtle differences such as carpenter ant eggs have silky covers rather than the gelatinous structure of most ant eggs. But in general, these features should correlate with most ants.
Once the ant eggs are laid by a queen ant which may be between 800-5,000 depending on the species, these eggs hatch into swarms of ants determined to build a colony and forage for food. But before that can happen, they need to be taken care of and allowed to safely grow into larvae.
To ensure the best chance of survival of the eggs, they are kept in the central chambers of the ant colony, where they are maintained at a constant temperature and humidity to ensure their development and protected by hundreds if not thousands of worker ants. This care is essential for the survival of the ant colony.
How Many Ant Eggs Are Laid Per Day?
The ant eggs are produced by a queen ant in the deepest part of the ant hive. Once queen ants finish mating on their nuptial flight, they will shed their wings and find a suitable nesting site to produce the next generation of ants. Their unfertilized eggs become drones while fertilized eggs become female workers.
Some species may have multiple queens while others may not have a queen at all. In the beginning, the queen is only capable of laying about 20 eggs a day but later as they get used to their role, the queens of most species can lay up to 1,000 eggs and army ant queens 5,000 a day if needed.
Recently laid eggs are extremely fragile and will be tended by the queen in the absence of worker ants. Due to the fragility of ant eggs, it requires careful handling by carrier egg ants worker to ensure they are not damaged or disturbed during their development. They ensure they are well-protected and maintained until they hatch into ants and larvae.
While freshly laid eggs can be fragile, the older eggs develop stronger skin which makes them capable of floating with some species developing hydrophobic egg skin that can resist water from entering the egg which can be used by ants as a raft during a flood.
Where Do Ants Live?
Ants have learned that it pays to work together toward a common goal. So they obviously work together and live in a colony. Working together the ants can divide up all the work that needs to be done from nursing, and cleaning to foraging, the colony can not only survive but thrive. But where are these colonies?
The cooperation of the ants working together has been so successful that ants and their colonies can be found just about everywhere with dry soil on Earth except Antarctica. Some species with cooperative ant queens have even built overseas colonial empires across the Pacific and Atlantic!
When ants build their nests, they often burrow into the ground, under rocks, or a fallen tree to cleverly disguise their entrance though it isn't a strict criterion. They start small and expand their nest as necessary over a few years to make room for new ants. It is, as they say, Rome wasn't built in a day.
As the nests grow, they become expansive, extremely large, and complex, consisting of interconnected corridors and chambers. While a newly built colony might need to be evacuated during rainfall, large colonies have water trap chambers that prevent flooding to the interior of the colony resulting in some ant colonies eventually occupying an entire acre or more.
How To Find Ant Colony?
The easiest way to go on about how to locate ant nest burrows is by finding small mounds of upended loose mounds of dirt which looks like a small circular valley with a hole in the middle that is used to enter and exit the nest.
Some species build large anthills which are even more obvious such as the towering anthills of the formica ants that can reach up to 8.2 feet (2.5 m). Meanwhile, carpenter ants live inside trees so there are no obvious entrances to easily locate their colony.
Ant Colony Hierarchy
Ant colonies are highly organized groups with a strict hierarchy. As a general rule, most colonies have three castes; the queen, the drones, and the workers.
Queen: The queens need to mate only once and then never mate again. The queen lays as many eggs as possible to keep the colony going strong. If you are wondering how to find a queen ant, the largest ant in a colony is often the queen.
Drones: The drones mate with newly formed queens from other colonies shortly before dying.
Workers: The workers are infertile females who do the rest of the work from gathering food, building the nest, and defending it from intruders.
Special classes: Some species of ants have an additional special class of ants such as soldiers/majors meant for battle and living silos or replete ants that store food respectively and act as poison testers to avoid contaminating the food supply of the entire colony.
So how many ants do you think can live in a colony? You may have seen hundreds of ants crawling around some anthills near your house however, the large ant colonies can be way bigger than that. It's not uncommon for large ant colonies to contain millions of ants.
The largest known ant colony is the Argentine Ant Supercolony which covers at least 3,700 miles (5960 km), stretching from the west coast of Spain, across the South of France, and into northern Italy, spanning the European Mediterranean region. This supercolony is nearly contiguous, cooperative with each other, and is home to around 307 million ants.
Ants are omnivores so they consume both plant and animal matter including fungus, nectar, honeydew, fruits, vegetables, sugar, insects, lizards, amphibians, and insect eggs. Younger worker ants are tasked with taking care of the hive while the older workers venture outside for food.
Surprisingly, ants have two stomachs. One of these stomachs is used for digestion while the other stomach stores food for the other ants. An ant may regurgitate the food in their social stomach to give to the queen, larvae, or other ants.
How To Eliminate Ant Eggs?
If you start to find ant eggs in the house then it's a sign that the ants are trying to nest and move into your house. While most ants prefer to nest outside, carpenter ants have no qualms about moving indoors and resting in the wooden parts of your house, often leading to rot and deterioration of your house's wood.
While it's more common for flying queen ants to establish a colony in the house, carpenter workers ants may carry the eggs into the house to escape the bad weather outside and start a new colony inside your home.
Is It Feasible To Target Eggs?
Removing eggs is one way to target insect populations as their eggs are vulnerable to larvicides. Without new hatchlings, the population of the colony wanes until they finally die off. However, targeting ant eggs in your pest control method isn’t always viable as the ant eggs are buried deep within the colony near the queen.
It would be more feasible to target the eggs when they are moving them outside or in your house. The main reason to target the egg is to prevent the birth of a new queen even if the old queen has been killed.
1. Boiling Water
If you’re looking for a quick method to rid of ants. Pouring hot water onto any new ant mound and eliminate most of the ants and eggs. However, this method might not work for very old nests with water-trap rooms to prevent flooding.
If you are recently having an ant infestation then the ant mounds on your property couldn't be that old anyway. Keep in mind that any hot water spills could lead to serious burns and will also kill nearby grass and create unsightly brown spots.
2. Vinegar And Sugar Bait
You can make vinegar and sugar bait by mixing 1/3 part vinegar with 2/3 parts sugar. Don't create into a paste but allow it to become a solution. If it is too thick add more vinegar. Once the solution is ready, pour it into a yogurt tub and place it on the floor near the ants.
The ants won't be able to resist the sugary treat in the vinegar but will end up being dissolved by the vinegar after trying to fetch the sugar in the vinegar.
3. Borax Solution
You can substitute vinegar for borax if you do not have vinegar in your home. Borax is harmless for people but is poisonous once ingested and broken down into boric acid which will end up melting the ants from the inside.
If you mix sugar, borax, and water, and place it in a yogurt tub on the floor, it can swiftly stop any other foraging ants as they drop what they are doing to start harvesting the borax solution. Since this solution requires the ants to first break down borax into boric acid, it may take around 2 days to finish working.
Another borax recipe is to mix borax acid with, sugar, flour, and water to make a dough bait. Shape the dough into small balls and place them around your garden. Once ants either consume or transport these poisonous treats to their nest, it will further continue to poison more ants who will continue to consume the doughball.
Similar to the first recipe, this will also take around two days to work and is capable of killing off the entire colony including the queen.
Diatomaceous earth is one of the safest pest control alternatives. Food-grade diatomaceous earth is non-toxic and safe for children and pets when being used. You can speed up the process by mixing this fine powder with sugar.
Unfortunately, diatomaceous earth may not eliminate the entire colony and when wet, the powder loses its effectiveness, preventing you from combining it with another liquid to form a paste. It only affects the ants that cut themselves on the powder leading to other ants avoiding the path.
If you are frustrated at the lack of efficacy from the DIY solution buy some slow-acting chemical insecticide sprays such as chaindrite. Keep in mind that it is critical that the treating chemical should be slow-acting because if they kill the ants before they can manage to return to the colony, the thousands of ants still inside the nest won't be affected.
Additionally, do not spray insecticide on carpenter ants that are emerging from the nest as it may cause them to spread out and build even more nests if they detect danger.
7. Toxic Bait
Another thing you can do is to use toxic bait. This is especially helpful if you are unable to discover the concealed colony of carpenter ants then this is the most recommended strategy. Buy poisonous gel baits from the local store and combine them with a teaspoon of sugar and milk.
Ants enticed by this bait will grab them and take them into their nests. This method can get rid of an entire carpenter ant population in mere days. Utilize tamper-proof bait stations as a safe alternative if you have pets or young children.
Call A Professional
If the infestation in your house expectedly seems extensive and you are having difficulty finding or exterminating all of the ants, you don't want to get your hands dirty or simply don't want to do it yourself, we recommend calling professionals.
The professional hires will get rid of the ants infestation in the house for you quickly after a thorough survey with a tailored plan without needing to get your hands dirty or worry about the safety of your children and pets.
