Hi all,

Today I came home ant took a look at my bell peppers and found black ants with red thoraxes swarming over them. There's a lot of damage from slugs (which I'm getting drunk these days) so I thought the ants were contributors, but I took a closer look and they weren't really doing much... just covering parts of the leaves. They didn't seem to be eating the leaves and I didn't see any aphids either.

My plants are near a fence and I noticed some groups on top of the fence as well as at the pinnacle of a couple poles sticking up about 2 feet above the fence. Very odd.

I read something related to a send-off for winged ant queens, but none of the ants had wings that I saw and I couldn't really find more info on the topic so I don't know if that's what they're doing or not. Does that sound right? Any other ideas? Thanks!