We have a huge swarm of flying ants. Is it your flying ants day today and what do you do about yours?

[FlyingAunts]

We've lived in this house for decades and we've never noticed any ants or flying ants here before. Today we've got a huge swarm of flying ants in the garden. They are crawling all over a stone wall, down onto the lawn and flying thick in the air. The garden is unusable, especially with the DC. We are in the UK and rural. We're a very nature-friendly family usually but these are awful and they are everywhere!

They are meant to fly on the same day, depending on the weather and whether urban or rural. I find this rather spooky!

Have you got flying ants today and what, if anything, have you done about the beasties?

Here's some information:

Flying ant day: when winged ants take their nuptial flight | Natural History Museum (nhm.ac.uk)

Yes! Today was flying ant day in my street and at work several miles away.

North west here and there've been swarms from here to my parents house which is 3 towns away.

We have a family joke about this. We, my dh and dd stopped in a local beauty spot for a walk, me and dd got out and walked a hundred yards. Suddenly there were flying ants everywhere. They were all over me and some even went in my bra!
They didn't go near dd so I ended up running back to the car and trying to get them out of my clothes . Everyone thought it was really funny, and they still bring it up now!
I'm staying in today 😉

They're here in the midlands too. I was weeding yesterday and noticed a few ants on the ground then DD noticed a pile of ant eggs on a soil hill and THOUSANDS of ants scurrying about, half of them winged. I wish I'd have got the kettle then as it's all gone now and they're probably everywhere, waiting for me to walk outside again 🤢.

We also had a load in the front garden which came and went quite fast. I now fear my house is built on an ant farm and I'll have to burn it down. I really don't like ants as fascinating as they are. I'm itchy again.

Here in Staffordshire, OH has killed 5 crawling on him, all windows now shut

When I went back into our garden in the early evening of that day - tucking my trousers into my socks first! - I could still see a few ants and flying ants on the wall and lawn but the vast majority had disappeared. By the next morning they had all disappeared - what a relief!

We didn't take any action against the ants and flying ants, other than staying out of the garden that day and keeping the doors and windows shut. They are part of nature, just doing what they do, and so waiting it out for a day seemed best and perfectly achievable to us in the end. We were lucky though that they were half way down the garden and we didn't get any in the house. If they had been in the house - like a poor pp! - or the nest was right next to the house then we would have had to do things differently. We've obviously got a big ant nest in the garden as there were thousands on the wall and flying. We'll just have to keep an eye on it but I hope we can live in harmony with it and no action is needed. The cruel irony of that approach was not lost on us though when, walking around a zoo some miles away with the DCs the very next day, I was bitten on the arm by one of the ungrateful little buggers! That's a flying ant btw, not the DCs.

Thanks to all pps! Very interesting to read everyone's stories from around different parts of the country and world, and good to know we weren't alone - with some poor pps worse off than us! I just hope we're away for our garden's Flying Ant Day next year!

Now it's the midges and the mosquitoes causing trouble - little buggers!