Pyramid Ant Facts & Information
Protect your home or business from pyramid ants by learning techniques for identification and control.
Treatment
How do I get rid of pyramid ants?
What Orkin Does
Your local Orkin Pro is trained to help manage pyramid ants and similar pests. Since every building or home is different, your Orkin Pro will design a unique ant treatment program for your situation.
Orkin can provide the right solution to keep pyramid ants in their place…out of your home, or business.
Frequently Asked Questions
Behavior, Diet & Habits
Understanding Pyramid Ants
Appearance
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Body: Common name comes from a pyramid shaped structure located on the top of the ant’s thorax.
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Color: Their head and thorax is reddish-black and the abdomen is black.
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Size: About 1/8-inch long.
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Characteristics: Pyramid ants have a gland at the tip of their abdomen that produces an odor when the ant is smashed that smells like rotten coconut.
Diet
Preferred foods include insects and honeydew produced by aphids and scale insects. While pyramid ants generally do not build nests inside, they may be seen foraging inside homes for sweets needed in their diet.
Geographic Range
While pyramid ants are found throughout the United States, they are the most plentiful in the southern states.
Habitat
Pyramid ants prefer to build their nests in dry, sandy soil in open areas. While lawns are often infested, pyramid ants sometimes also nest under objects on the ground. Their nests have a visible volcano-shaped mound around the nest entrance that is constructed by the workers within the nest.
Nests
Nests are small and house as little as a few hundred ants, while some nest populations can reach up to a few thousand. Each nest has three classes of ants:
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Males
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Queens
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Workers
Reproduction
Mating flights of winged male and female reproductives swarm and mate in the summer months to form new colonies. As with most ant species, the mated queen sheds her wings and locates a suitable habitat to build the new nest. The queen lays eggs inside the nest and cares for the emergent ant grubs and cocoons until they become adults. These first generation adults are typically workers that will help the queen care for the subsequent generations by collecting and bringing food back to the nest and by protecting and maintaining the nest.
Pyramid ants prefer to build their nests in dry, sandy soil in open areas. While lawns are often infested, pyramid ants sometimes also nest under objects on the ground. Their nests have a visible volcano-shaped mound around the nest entrance that is constructed by the workers within the nest.