Little Brown Ants – Cornfield Ants?
Way back on July 31, 2021, I was trying to get pictures of the little brown ants that make anthills all around the edges of our driveway. The picture above sows one of them coming out of their hole with a crumb of dirt in her jaws. And here’s one of her sisters, doing the same thing;
They were obviously enlarging their nest down there. It looks like they loosely glue together dirt with either water or maybe spit, and then haul the dirt balls to the surface to make room for their eggs and larvae.
They aren’t exactly red, or yellow, or black, but kind of a generic brown. And, looking at this one full-length, they only have one segment between the thorax and the abdomen.
My best guess on these is that they are Cornfield Ants, Lasius neoniger, which are one of the species of Citronella Ants. Every fall, we have a day or two where there are swarms of male ants and new queen ants that I think are the same species as these, or at least a close relative. Like these, for example. They aren’t the kind of ant that gets into houses, so you will mostly see them in relatively bare ground where they can dig under rocks and the like. These are not what I would consider a pest ant, although I suppose they would get into your picnic foods if you unwisely set up on top of one of their nests.
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