Active all year in Florida, pyramid ants are a predatory pest with one redeeming characteristic. These ants have adapted to life with humans remarkably well. Where you see one, thousands are likely living in a mounded nest nearby and they have a nasty habit of sneaking into your house. But they do one thing that may make you think twice about how badly you want to kill them all off.
Pyramid ants are named for the pyramid-shaped protrusion on the top of the thorax. Their coloration is typically brown to reddish black with a darker abdomen on a segmented body. They are a smaller ant, only about 1/8 of an inch long and while they can bite, they aren’t prone to it.
A colony of pyramid ants isn’t terribly large or complex. They usually number in the range of a few thousand individuals. This sounds like a lot unless you compare them to something like the red fire ant which can number up to a half million in a colony and requires serious outdoor pest control. They make a mound of excavated soil around the entry to their nest. This makes them easy to spot in the lawn unlike pavement ants who prefer to live under your stepping stones and patio.
The colony consists of a small to medium-sized central chamber that sits not far below the sold surface. They don’t dig nearly as deep as termites or get underneath heavy stones like pavement ants. Reaching them with treatments and baits isn’t very difficult since their home is rather close to the surface of the lawn and fairly accessible.
Your lawn and any other open ground is where the pyramid ants will most often colonize. They aren’t very like to build nests in the walls or foundation of your house like larger yellow ants. They won’t burrow into your wooden structural supports like carpenter ants. They like sand dunes, pastures, roadsides, fields and scrub-covered land.
So far, the pyramid ant doesn’t sound like the peskiest of pests. When compared to the problematic pests – those with stingers, the ones that carry diseases and the few whose bites cause serious allergic reactions – its danger factor actually ranks pretty low. The biggest complaint among homeowners is that the pyramid ant will forage in the home.
Sweet foods are this pest’s Achilles heel. They love sugary foods and will come after anything you leave within their very large reach. They leave a very obvious (to an ant) trail and all the workers will traipse along it if they find a tasty treat in your home. They make up for this habit by being very easy to kill.
If you can stand the unsightly ant hills in your yard, this pest’s one redeeming trait might convince you not to eradicate it. The pyramid ant likes sweets, it herds aphids to harvest their honeydew but it is also a predatory ant. It eats both dead and live insects and is a particular predator of the dreaded red fire ant. If you have to choose between a mild-mannered pyramid ant and a red fire ant, which one would you keep around?