West Houston, Katy, Brookshire, Cypress...Winged ants in the pool this weekend?

[BowserB]

We live in Katy. We were out of town Thursday thru Saturday. Returned Saturday afternoon to find thousands (OK, maybe hundreds) of dead and dying large winged ants in the pool and in the skimmer socks. [Sidebar: Thanks to TFP for informing me about skimmer socks, else these little critters would be in the filter.] I scooped up all I could see, hit them with a shot of liquid insecticide and dumped them. Same with those in the skimmers. Clearly this started while we were gone, but today they were back raining into the pool and around it too. It's too late to call Edmund Gwenn, James Whitmore, and James Arness ("Them!" Warner Brothers 1954)), but I wondered if it is just me, or is it happening in the area. If normal mating flights, then it should be over in a few days...right? I've inspected these closely, and they are indeed ants and not termites.

 

[homegameroom]

I’m in south Florida and we get them too. They are a little annoying, but they don’t usually last for more than a week or 2. +1 on the skimmer socks (I use hair nets) to catch them before they head to the filter!

 

[BowserB]

Thanks, Florida. I've lived in the Houston area 45 years, but I've never lived this far west--32 miles--from downtown. I've also not had a pool to collect these large flying formicidae, as they must rain down every late spring? I can see they'd be unnoticed in the grass or flower beds. I bought the named "skimmer socks" before reading about hair nets, which I've not also bought. The actual skimmer socks from Amazon are hugely more expensive, but they last longer in my very limited testing. I'll probably use a couple more and then save the rest for "special occasions" while using the hair nets for every day. I'll say this, though, the stuff I've collected this spring in the socks would doubtless been a cartridge filter cleaning mess. I'm at a loss to understand why the equipment manufacturers don't mention using this pre-filter option to keep the main filter from filling up prematurely--unless they just don't wish to admit that daily maintenance is recommended! Thanks again.

 

[Texas Splash]

Common for us. Clouds of them will huddle together on the water's surface and eventually get pulled into the skimmer. They aren't aggressive like fire ants, so just pull the skimer sock out and clean. You can expect this thing to happen 2-3 times per year.

 

[BowserB]

Interesting that modern ants evolved from prehistoric wasps. The flight involves multiple matings of queens, each with multiple males--but only the strongest and fastest, since the queens fight them off. The males die, and a queen can continue fertilizing eggs from the one mating for as long as 20 years and tens of millions of eggs. Talk about survival of a species. Only the strongest and fastest procreate, so in theory, ants are getting stronger with every generation. Aside from man, ants are the only creatures on earth who plan and wage war. Equally amazing is that the facts of ant reproduction were accurately described in the movie Them! in 1954, by Edmund Gwenn, seven years after he was Santa Claus in Miracle on 34th Street.

 

[Oly]

The earths aliens actually arrived long ago, ants. Well organized too.