Saturday, July 03, 2010

Winged Invasion

No bugs like the rain it seems, especially the heavy rains we've had for the last 4-5 days.  My house is crawling with sow bugs, flies and ants that were not to be seen a week ago.  Also some ants swarm with the first heavy rains - that is they grow wings and try to fly - by the thousands.  All the ones I've seen have not been very successful, they are just all over the yard and left behind wings flutter around like little kites.

Local gringo talk is they are termites but I've had a constant battle with leaf cutting ants.  I just asked my drinking water guy today and he says they are leaf cutters that get drowned out of their underground nests.  The termite story is some of the tribe are thrown out of the nest to go make a new colony.  I'll go with flooded leaf cutters.  In my back patio there were thousands of little ones, 20-30 wasp looking ones and a few beetle like creatures - all with wings. I did my best to end the lives of as many as I could with the rational of saving my garden.



Some of the small ants on my back patio


Termites but they look similar


Mine had the two part body is another reason I think leaf cutters

2 comments:

Leslie Harris said...

I had a bunch of these winged ants invade my kitchen the other night. I had seen them a few years ago in my suegra's house. But never in mine.

I had never seen so many. There were hundreds of them. Hubby agrees on them being leaf cutter ants who have been flooded out. But that didn't stop us from going after them with our fly swatters! :)

Steve Cotton said...

Thanks for the information. We had an invasion of them last year. I came to the same conclusion.

The construction of the house finished in April 2011 and I'm pretty much settled in. As of March 2014 I'm in preparation for rain mode for this coming summer. That includes sealing and painting things and dealing with drainage issues from last year.

Sparks Mexico Web
Manzanillo Information
House building in Pinal Villa

Archivo del blog

Expat.com

Expat Exchange