The Pharaoh ant is a tiny light-yellow to red-brown voracious ant reaching 2mm in size. The ant is known for its aggressive breeding and invasive abilities. Pharaoh colonies proliferate by “budding,” whereby a segment of the colony, including queens workers and their brood, (eggs and immature ants), leave the colony to form an alternative nesting site. Unlike some ant colonies, Pharoah ants have no inter-colony hostility. They help each other out, and can consolidate into smaller colonies, when under attack from ant poisons or baiting stations They are therefore referred to as unicolony ants.

Pharaoh colonies are multiple as opposed to single queened colonies, they can, therfore, easily weather the death of part of the colony, and the attack stimulates them to breed faster.

Unlike many ants, which have two breeding cycles each year, Pharaoh ants can breed continuously in an indoor heated environment, and this contributes to their rate of spread. While the ants prefer warm environments, for their colonies, they can nest almost anywhere, and colonies as small as a thimble, can be found between sheets of paper, or in furniture The abundance of these small nests makes it hard to eradicate a population of Pharaoh ants, and clearing an infested building can be a project taking years.

Pharaoh ants are notorious for their ability to rapidly infest an urban area. They quickly spread through the urban environment, invading apartment dwellings, grocery stores, food establishment and other buildings. They can even thrive in unsanitary hospitals or rest homes. They are a health hazard in improperly sterilized hospital environments, entering wounds, invading drip lines and instrumentation. They are an exception to the general rule that ants do not spread deadly disease, as the Pharaoh antis believed to carry bacterial infections such as Staphylococcus and Psuedomonas.

Pharaoh ants are omnivorous, and will eat any human foodstuff, ranging from such sweet household substances as fruit juices, sodas, jellies, honey and corn syrup, to salty protein foods such as greases, shortening and peanut butter. They do prefer sweets. They will feed off their own dead and even eat non food substances such as shoe polish. Pharaoh ants can also destroy household material, and have been known to gnaw holes in silk, rayon and rubber goods.

The most effective eradication strategy for Pharaoh ants is to place baited ant stations in areas where the ants like to forage. The ants take the slow acting poison back to the colony, where the other ants then eat it and die. Because they are omnivorous, traps set with ground liver mixed with boric acid, a slow acting ant poison can also be effective.

Homeowners should avoid the temptation of killing individual ants and trails of ants as they make their way to the ant stations, as this prevents the ants from carrying sufficient poison back to the colony, which is essential for effective ant eradication.