Ghost Ants or Black Headed Ants

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Appearance

Ghost ants look like tiny, white apparitions who suddenly appear and seem to disappear just as quickly.

Workers are are 1/16 inch/1.5 mm in length. The legs, pedicel, gaster, and antennae are pale, almost translucent, in color and the head and thorax are darker. For this reason, the ghost ant is also known in some areas as the black-headed ant.

Reproduction

Colonies of ghost ants tend to be moderate to large in size and multiple queens are present.New colonies are started by "budding" where one or more reproductive females, several workers, and possibly some brood(larvae and pupae) migrate to a new nesting site. Their biology in similar to the Pharoah ant.

Ant Trails

An excellent article by Univ. of Florida Extension Service can be found at  Ant Trails:Baiting. It gives an overview of management with baits.

How to Get Rid of Ghost Ants

Baiting would be the preferred treatment over typical residual spraying, so you can eliminate the entire colony, unless you use a non repellent spray. When choosing ant baits, it is best to choose from both the sugar based baits and protein based baits .

 

Why Ant Bait?

The use of residual sprays or dusts will cause stress on the colonies,
causing them to split into sub-colonies that scatter to other areas in the structure. This is also called budding. After spraying, your problem can be worse than at the beginning. When you bait, you will want a slow acting bait. Quick kill insecticides and baits will only kill the foraging ants, not allowing the foraging ants to take the bait back home to feed the queen, nest workers and brood. If the current ant bait that you are using is not acceptable to the ants, if they are not visiting the bait, it is recommended that you change the baits.
Ants require carbohydrates-sugars, proteins and greases. They find a variety of these sources in nature. Examples are: other insects(proteins and greases), nectar, aphid honeydew , plant products(sugar and carbohydrates) Choosing a bait would require knowing what they are currently feeding off of, according to the nutritional needs of the colony. To be sure that you have all the baiting needs met, you may want to be ready with a sugar-carbohydrate bait, a grease-fat bait, and a protein based bait. Ghost ants tend to forage in a more random pattern than does the pharaoh ant, so that feeding trails may be more difficult to recognize. These ants have a high need for water and may be commonly found in or around kitchens, baths or other moisture sources. IT IS VERY IMPORTANT TO REMOVE ANY OTHER FOOD COMPETITION WHEN BAITING AND LEAVE THE BAIT ALONE ONCE THE ANTS START FEEDING ON IT.

 

Non Repellents For Outside and Inside Ant Control:

Spraying for Ghost Ants: Non-Repellents

The best insecticides for ant control are non repellent insecticides such as Taurus SC, Termidor SC, Optigard Flex, Alpine Aerosol, and Phantom Aerosol. Termidor SC and Taurus SC are labeled for inside usage.

Unless you can treat the nest directly, spraying is not an effective solution for Argentine Ants, unless you use a non repellent insecticides or "undetectable" liquid treatments Phantom Aerosol or Alpine Aerosols labeled for the inside. Optigard Flex is another very good non repellent labeled for inside for Argentine Ants(ants popular in California)

Unlike older insecticides, non repellent insecticides can't be smelled, tasted, or even felt by pests. So they crawl through the treated area, not knowing that by ingesting treated materials or merely contacting the insecticide, they'll die.

Again, workers must eat the bait, take it back to the nest, and feed to the queen and larval ants. This type of control is incompatible with treatments(such as repellent sprays)that prevent workers from returning to the nest with the bait.