I DON’T know if it is the very welcome spring rains, but we suddenly seem to be inundated with flying ants. We’ve had several invasions over the past couple of weeks, generally causing a degree of havoc and mayhem.
My insect book* is somewhat confusing on the issue. Our friends fall in the chapter on termites and it says, “Termite reproductives (‘flying ants’) have two pairs of similar wings…, these are shed after a brief nuptial flight.” There’s more, “Parent colonies release eye reproductives at dusk, often after spring rain. These fly a short distance, settle, and detach their wings.” It all sounds fairly unromantic to me, including being referred to as a “reproductive”. There follows several pages of possibilities as to exactly which flying ants are ours, but I’m at a loss to identify them. So, you’ll have to make do with some observations.
Firstly, the birds. They have an absolute field day with flying ants, swooping in to take them on the wing. Particularly, we noticed from the Hide, the forked-tailed drongoes must have stocked up on nourishment for a month in the first 10 minutes. During another invasion, we watched a bird standing over the exit to one of the flying ant nests, just selecting them as they emerged.
It was during this invasion that we saw the monkeys at it. We have seldom seen such excitement as they chased and ate as many flying ants as they could in as little time as possible. They leapt into the air at them, they swung on low branches at them, they snatched them off the ground, they did front somersaults and back somersaults to get them, and they fought over them. It was all very entertaining while it lasted and those monkeys must have ended up with very full stomachs.
Which brings me to a friend’s dog, a golden Labrador, Kylie (that’s the dog, not the friend), apparently took full advantage of one of the invasions to take in as many flying ants as she could manage. Well, manage may not be the right word, because Kylie was soon violently ill and produced what can only be described as a flying ant ball. So, they’re not good for everyone.
They can be good for humans, though. I can remember as a youngster being down from Joburg at Umtentweni for our school’s annual camp. There was a flying ant invasion and our dear friend the cook, (a huge and much-loved Zulu called “Cookie”, quite naturally), had a group of us gathered around his fire in the campsite and he was hard at it frying ants in butter for us privileged few. Memory tells me they were delicious, but it must be borne in mind that to a youngster at a boys’ camp anything other than every day camp food would have been delicious. Cheers, here’s to flying ants in hot butter!
*Insects of South Africa, Mike Picker, Charles Griffiths and Alan Weaving, Struik, Cape Town, 2002.
