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Need Help Identifying Swarm of Bugs

Hello,

I am hoping to acquire some help in identifying a swarm of insects that are all over our log home. We have lived in this home for ten years and have never seen anything like it. We noticed them this morning and they are still around this afternoon.

They are too small to get a photo of, beiing much smaller than a grain of rice. We looked at them through a 40X jewelers loup and I will do my best to describe them. We live in Maine and it is quite cold here and the insects are moving very slow. I caught 20 or so in a jar and once I brought them in the house where its warmer, they became very.

So far, we have not seen them fly and cannot see if they have wings or not. They are black in color, but not jet black. They have 6 legs and two antenna's that are the same size/length as their legs. The bodies appear to have overlapping plates (sort of like an armadillo) but we can't tell how many. They do not have 2 or three sections (like an ant), but rather are of consistent shape from head to rear (like an earwig).

There are literary 1,000's of them all over the logs on our log home as well as the railings on our front porch. We really want to know if they are some sort of wood boring insect doing damage to our home. They may also in the larvae or early stage in life making it difficult to identify.

Any help would be greatly appreciated, even if it is just some assistance where we could identify them.

Thank you,

MaineChowder

Might they be springtails?
.
You can click on the images to enlarge and then click on the tab that says IMAGES to see more.

 
They may be. It is so har
They may be. It is so hard to tell because they are so small. I will do some image searches and see if they look familiar.

If that is what they are, are they dangerous?

 
Not in the least...
They are pretty much harmless. They may be a sign of dampness in wood, but they do no damage and can't hurt you.

 
Thank You both so much! We di
Thank You both so much! We did some more research online and we are quite certain that they are springtails. I really appreciate the assistance!

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