Help & frequently asked questions

Dealate forecasts ant nuptial flights species by species: the day's best window, a rolling 7-day outlook, and a live forecast map. It's built for ant keepers, naturalists, and anyone who wants to know why the sidewalk is suddenly full of flying ants.

Ants swarm during nuptial flights, brief mating events that most species time to warm, humid days, often within hours of rain from late spring through early autumn. In the largest UK study of the phenomenon (Hart et al. 2018, 13,394 records), flights clustered above 13°C and nearly every day over 25°C produced a flight somewhere in the country. The exact day varies by species and region, so there is no fixed calendar. Dealate forecasts these windows species by species, scoring each day's likelihood and the best hours to look up, rather than promising a date it cannot know.

A nuptial flight is the brief window when a colony's winged queens and males (alates) leave the nest to mate on the wing. It's the only time most ants fly. It lasts hours, not days, and depends on weather triggers, so missing it can mean waiting until next year. Dealate forecasts nuptial flights species by species, with the day's best window and a rolling 7-day outlook, to help you be outside at the right moment.

Flying Ant Day is the popular name for the UK's summer nuptial flights, when winged queen and male ants leave their nests together to mate in the air. Despite the name, it isn't one fixed day: different species and regions peak on different hot, humid, still afternoons, usually after rain, across a window that runs roughly from July into early autumn. Dealate forecasts that window day by day rather than naming a single date.

Yes, but only mildly. Flying ants can bite and give a mild sting if handled, the same as the worker ants already in your garden, but they aren't aggressive and won't seek you out. A nuptial flight puts large numbers of them in the air at once, which is what makes them noticeable, not any change in behaviour.

A dealate is an ant, usually a newly mated queen, that has shed its wings after a nuptial flight, snapping them off to begin founding a colony on the ground. The word, and the app's name, marks the moment a flight ends and a new colony begins. Dealate, the ant nuptial-flight forecast app, is named for this transition and helps ant keepers and naturalists find queens during the flights that produce them.

Nuptial flights are triggered by a combination of weather cues, most commonly warmth, high humidity, and rainfall that softens the ground, along with low wind and the right season. In the same UK study, wind above roughly 14 mph (6.3 m/s) sharply cut flight activity, while barometric pressure showed no measurable effect at all. Different ant species respond to different thresholds, so conditions that launch one species may not move another. Dealate builds its forecast from temperature, humidity, rainfall, and wind, but these are probabilistic triggers, not switches: the same weather does not guarantee a flight.

Dealate's forecast is a likelihood score, not a promise. Dealate scores each ant species' odds of flying from weather thresholds grounded in published research and a rolling 7-day outlook, but nuptial flights depend on local triggers no model fully captures. Treat a high score as a strong reason to look up, not a guarantee. Every sighting you log helps build toward a public accuracy track record as that data grows.

Dealate Pro is the whole app: species-by-species flight odds for your own GPS location or any place you search, the day's best window, the 7-day outlook, the live forecast map, and species alerts by email. Dealate Pro costs $5.99/month, $12.99 per 3-month season, $24.99/year, or $49.99 for lifetime access, and every recurring plan starts with a 7-day free trial of the full experience.

Dealate has a free tier and one paid tier, Dealate Pro. A free account (sign up, no card) shows today's overall flight-chance band for your saved location, keeps your own sighting log, and opens the community sightings map around it. Dealate Pro costs $5.99/mo, $12.99/3 mo, $24.99/yr, $49.99 once for lifetime access, and every recurring plan starts with a 7-day free trial.

You report a sighting in Dealate using the in-app sighting log: record the species, place, and time of a nuptial flight you witnessed, and it joins your personal history. Your observations are citizen science for myrmecology, collected toward building a public accuracy track record as more sightings come in.

Dealate works anywhere in the world. A free account (sign up, no card) shows today's overall flight-chance band for your saved location, keeps your own sighting log, and opens the community sightings map around it. To point the forecast at your own GPS location, search and set any place, pan the live map, see the 7-day outlook and the day's best window, and get species alerts by email, you upgrade to Dealate Pro ($5.99/month up to $49.99 lifetime); every recurring plan starts with a 7-day free trial, so you can check the full forecast for your own area before paying anything.