Crazy Ants

The crazy ant is also called Paratrechina longicornis (Latreille) and they can often be found in swarms in homes and yards. These particular species of ants always goes in search of food far away from their nest and this makes it problematic for getting rid of the nest.

Description
The morphology of the ant is so unique to the extent that it is unmistakable for any other species. Comparatively the crazy ant has a smallish size of 2.3 to 3mm. It is made up of head; thorax, petiole, and gaster are dark brown to blackish. It is fortified for both defence and attack with the application of venom.

Life Cycle of Crazy Ants
Crazy ants have colonies that vary from average to very large sized populations. In warmer regions, the yearly reproduction period is irregular. In places like Florida, its reproductive period is between May to September. From time to time, the wingless queen becomes visible while mating is happening in groupings around the nest entrance.

Distribution
Naturally, crazy ants are agricultural and household pests in nearly all the tropical areas as well as less tropical locations. Additionally, it is a common home pest in mild temperature locations. It thrives in unsettled and man-made situations such as ships on voyage. It has been seen in far away Sweden, Estonia and in South New Zealand. The available facts have suggested that crazy ants originated from Southeast Asia or Melanesia. In America alone, it is thickly found in from Florida to South Carolina and west to Texas. Ideally, it can be found in homes and warehouses in larger eastern part of the US as well as in California and Arizona. Again, Hawaii, Missouri, Virginia, Buffalo and Boston are not left out. Also in Canada, it has been found in Sillery and Toronto.

Pest Status
In America, the crazy ant is reputed for pest. It has been seeing walking on the floors of big apartment’s houses in New York, hotels, flats in Boston as well as inside hotel kitchens in San Francisco and even in Florida and Gulf states. Fortunately, it is useful for meaningful agricultural pest because it helps to distribute and also shield the phloem-feeding Hemiptera including mealybugs, scale insects and plant aphids.

Foraging and Feeding
The workers can be categorized as omnivorous. They prey on both live and dead insect, seeds, honeydew, fruits and a lot more household foods. The crazy ant flourishes in areas like gasoline stations, convenient stores in addition to sidewalk cafes where staff is prone to carry crumbs and attraction of insects by lights. Obviously, eating richly protein food is seasonal, hence they reject honey or anything sugar in the summer months. Meanwhile honeydew is their favourite in the spring and fall. By joint effort, they are able to carry big food materials.

Nest sites
Interestingly, crazy ants can easily live in both extremely dry and very cold season. In most cases, their nest is usually far from where they search for food. These nest could be in places like trash, refuse, rotten woods inside soil or objects, under debris building etc. besides, they are capable of nesting any where regardless of the weather environment. But you can trail their workers carrying food to the nest.

Treatment
Naturally speaking, the best form of control is to keep them away by good housekeeping methods and tidiness. Since they nest is some distance away from home, create entrance barriers by caulking external holes in the house and weather-stripping can enhance control. The use of indoor chemical control may be baits, dusts, spot treatment using residual sprays. For outdoor treatments, you can apply chemical mixing as baits, granule, dusts in addition to sprays.