Black garden ant
The black garden ant is the little black ant you see marching across paths and patios. It lives in a big family with one queen and thousands of workers. On warm summer days, flying ants with wings come out of the nest.
How fast is it?
Fun facts
A queen can live up to 29 years. That is the longest life known for any ant, bee or wasp that lives in a colony.
A nest usually has 4,000 to 7,000 workers, and sometimes as many as 40,000.
Flying ants are young queens and males on their wedding flight. Afterwards the queen breaks off her wings.
While starting a new nest, the queen does not eat for weeks. She lives on the muscles of her old wings.
A new worker comes out of its cocoon completely white and turns black in about an hour.
Most asked questions about Black garden ant
?Why are there flying ants in summer?
On hot summer days, young queens and males fly out to mate. The queens then land, drop their wings and start new nests.
?How long does an ant queen live?
A black garden ant queen can live up to 29 years.
Myth buster
Myth: Flying ants are a different kind of ant.
Truth: No. They are the same ants. Young queens and males grow wings so they can fly off, meet and start new nests.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Lasius niger
- Named by
- Linnaeus, 1758
- Group
- Ants
- Family
- Formicidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Hymenoptera > Formicidae
- Lives on
- Europe, North America, Asia
- Also known as
- Common black ant
Where the facts come from
- Black garden ant (Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0): what it looks like, where it lives, what it eats, sizes and fun facts, retold in simple words.
- Picture by Katja Schulz from Washington, D. C., USA. CC BY 2.0, Wikimedia Commons. The round sticker of this bug is cut from the same picture.
If we got something wrong, sorry, we are bug fans, not a science journal. Tell us at [email protected] and we will fix it.
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