Ant Hill Wood

My wife spotted the 2007 nuptial mating flights erupting from the ground just after a heavy thunder storm. The sun then came out and made it very hot and muggy (humid), so dashing outside with her camera in hand, Jen snapped several pictures of this activity.

Flying ants make good meals for birds, and they also get caught up in spiders webs. The predation rate is extremely high, so for every queen that mates successfully and manages to found her own colony, there are perhaps at least 50 more that die. The rate of success therefore is quite low, while the failure rate is about 95%, so this is why mature established nests/colonies send out such large numbers of winged males and female each and every year, or at least while the mother queen is capable of producing winged sexuals from the eggs she lays.

Lasius flavus are quite a pretty little ant, and the workers glow with a fiery orange in strong sunlight; but at other times can appear as red or yellow, depending upon the time of day and the light intensity.

A second mating flight took place on August 25th, almost a month after the first. So, with her trusty camera in her hand, my wife dashed out to take these lovely pictures, while I went to hunt for newly mated queens. Note the antennae on the winged males in straight, and lacks the typical "elbow joint" seen on the workers and females!

Here are 4 photos taken by my wife Jenny of Lasius flavus in their wild habitat.

 The first picture shows a group of flavus workers crawling in the grass around their nest.

Photo 2 is a different shot of the same nest.

The 3rd photo is quite interesting, as it shows a Lasius flavus nest which is being shared by a colony of Myrmica rubra. Note the large number of larvae. The smaller larvae are flavus, while the larger belong to the M. rubra colony.

The last picture shows the underside of the nest roof stone. Both species of ant were harmoniously living together in peaceful co-existence, as they made no attempts to fight each other when they came into contact !

Here are some true meadow ants, the species Lasius flavus which can be found all over Britain and much of Europe. This lovely little yellow ant spends virtually all its time underground living on soil dwelling insects, such as root aphids. This photo clearly shows a queen with eggs, and this colony is kept by Ordidomi who lives in France. My thanks to him for joining my Ant Hill World forum and allowing me the use of some of his very nice photos!!

Though these ants are not in a wild nest; but while this colony is being kept in an artificial nest, they are still doing well. Just look at all the cocooned pupae they have, which will produce lots more worker ants for the colony and ensure its survival.

Here is a species of meadow ant which are not found in Britain. It is a rather attractive ant, looking a bit like a cross between a L.niger and L.flavus. Lasius are quite common and because they are not too difficult to keep, are often very adaptable when kept in an artificial nest. This photo shows worker ants with pupae.

A nice photo of a Lasius marginatus queen in Ordidomi's ant collection. All of his ants seem to do so well in a captive environment, which says a lot for the care and type of artificial nest he uses for his ants !