This past spring and summer were a great adventure for me because somehow I ended up with several patches of passion fruit vines growing wild on my property. They have never grown here before, but they were incredibly enjoyable! They provided almost limitless photo opportunities for me over the course of the year. At first, there were the amazing, large, exotic looking flowers. I had never seen anything quite like them before, and during the spring and early summer they were everywhere! Then there were all the birds, bees, wasps, and other insects that the flowers attracted. They brought in a variety like I have never had before. Then finally there was the fabulous fruit at the end of summer and fall. They are all gone now, but I can’t wait for them to come back up in the spring!

One of the many insects that were attracted by the passion fruit flowers and fruits were Florida carpenter ants. There are over 900 different species of carpenter ants, and they can be found all over the world, but the Florida carpenter ant can only be found in Florida and southern Georgia. Like all carpenter ants, they like to nest in wood, but unlike some types, Florida carpenter ants only choose rotting or otherwise soft woods. They can cause structural damage to buildings, but only if the wood is already somehow compromised. On my property, there are plenty of trees, and especially the live oaks can seem healthy but actually be rotting from the inside out. Much of my property has been left wild for the wildlife, so it’s not surprising that I would have carpenter ants around.

I have always had a live and let live attitude towards the wildlife, including most of the “pest” species, as long as they stay out of my home. I have seen the carpenter ants around, but with plenty for them to eat and plenty of nesting sites outside, they have never been a nuisance to me. I’ve always just ignored them until I began to see them on the passion fruit vines regularly. I knew that they ate other insects (alive or dead), decaying plant matter, and dead animals, but I didn’t realize that they also liked sweets (like so many other types of ants). They were on the passion fruit vines because they were looking for nectar, and later on for fruit. They were never there in overwhelming numbers, and just like the other nectar feeders they helped with pollination. They can’t sting, but they may bite, but only if disturbed, so they were never a problem as far as I was concerned. And once again, the passion fruit provided me with the chance to photograph them. Since they are a species that isn’t found any place else in the world, that seems pretty cool to me!

The ants in the included photos were feeding on the last bits of nectar in the flowers as they were closing up to develop into fruit. Most of the other nectar feeders had already moved on to other types of flowers at this point. I hadn’t given the ants much thought up until the others had moved on, but I look forward to getting more ant shots next spring and summer. Do you folks have carpenter ants in your areas?