Could be. Could be some 'off-brand' ants. They're pretty controllable if so. Down here (because DE and borax simply are not available, unless you spend approx. a whole day to go into Panama City...and sometimes not then), flower gardeners simply bomb the hell out of the ants with Terro or some other organophosphate. Herb and food gardeners (generally) prefer to use a solution of vinegar, coffee grounds, cinnamon, garlic, black pepper and hot pepper. It works just fine, but in the rainy season one has to apply it a couple-three times a week.
Ants, just btw, hate the devil out of cinnamon -- everywhere, so I'm told. And, cinnamon is way cheap here, too. Me, I'd rather use a 3:2 mix of sugar and powdered borax. Kills the little bastids right after they eat it...and they apparently like to feed it to queens, too. Awwwwww, too bad.
Many thanks for your thoughts!
Some sources recommend vinegar to kill weeds. That hasn’t been to successful for us in the past. The soil here is pretty acid, too, and the locals recommend increasing the soil pH with nitrogen. Does your vinegar solution kill the ants or just repel them? Are there specific proportions of the other ingredients that are used? Do you make a tea out of them, or do you sprinkle the actual coffee grounds around and then add the other stuff. The idea of using easily available household ingredients is very appealing. Somebody once told me that ants hate orange peels, so I put the peels in the blender and then poured the suspension on the anthill. Next day, the ants from he** were happily carting pieces of orange rind somewhere. In that neighborhood, I was a tremendous source of amusement. They’d see me come outside with my blender, come over and say, “NOW what are you doing?” (It’s nice to be a source of entertainment to others. Woulda been better if some of those interventions worked.)