On Fri, 10 Nov 2006 14:53:05 -0500, Tom The Great wrote:

:On Thu, 09 Nov 2006 18:09:30 -0600, clifto wrote:
:
:Dan_Musicant wrote:
: Several times a year I undergo an ant invasion in my kitchen,
: principally. They always seem the same - very small black ants, at the
: most 1/10 inch long. This time, it's different. They are much larger,
: probably 2-3 times the mass of the usual ants and around 1/8 inch long,
: black.
:
:We get ants every year. I put down the packaged ant "traps", little boxes
:with poison in them. It's not long before you can see the trail they're
:taking. A few days and they disappear.
:
:
:I found that simply vacuuming up the tiny ants reduce their numbers
:enough that they dissapper. We don't get many invasions of the small
nes, one or two times a year.
:
:later,
:
:tom @ www.carpenter-ant-killer.com

Yes, this time I even did some vacuuming of ants, really just because I
had the vacuum out. Normally, I use sponges and I have a pile of 15-20
of them at hand and ready!

The ants have dwindled and dwindled and seem uninterested in the bait
now. I see at most 1/2 dozen at a time, usually 2-3, but always there's
at least one. They are sticking to the trails they were on when they
were hitting the bait heavily. I sponged their trails, but they seem to
know where they were, which puzzles me. I wonder if these are not
stragglers who got lost in my kitchen and haven't made it home yet. I
figure the nest may have been decimated now by the rather large
ingestion of boric acid bait. I figure the queen is dead.

What I'm wondering is if these ants have a plan B. IOW, if they don't
have a princess or two in pupa stage waiting to take over the colony
should the queen die for some reason.

Dan