A queen ant is an adult, reproducing female ant in an ant colony; generally she will be the mother of all the other ants in that colony. Some female ants do not need to mate to produce offspring, reproducing through asexual parthenogenesis or cloning and all of those offspring will be female.

Ant offspring develop from larvae specially fed in order to become sexually mature among most species. Depending on the species, there can be either a single mother queen, or potentially, hundreds of fertile queens in some species.

Fire ants range in size from 2 to 6 mm. A range of worker ants is shown along with a queen.

There are loads of cool ant videos that I tried to put on here but It didnt work so here are the links anyway. The one about the ant nest is my favorite of an ants nest which covers 538 square feet and travels 26 feet into the earth. In it’s construction, the colony moved 40 tons of soil. Billions of ant loads of soil were brought to the surface. Each load weighed four times as much as the worker ant, and in human terms, was carried over 1/2 mile to the surface. It is the equivalent of building the great wall of china. It is truly a wonder of the world
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G40LRn1X4Hs

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HGA3EA5JWCw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ozkBd2p2piU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R3Mt2E1M6dU&feature=related
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Here is a plaster cast of the ant nest as shown in one of my videos

1	Like all insects, ants have six legs. Each leg has three joints. The legs of the ant are very strong so they can run very quickly. If a man could run as fast for his size as an ant can, he could run as fast as a racehorse. Ants can lift 20 times their own body weight. An ant brain has about 250 000 brain cells. A human brain has 10,000 million so a colony of 40,000 ants has collectively the same size brain as a human.
2	The average life expectancy of an ant is 45-60 days. Ants use their antenae not only for touch, but also for their sense of smell. The head of the ant has a pair of large, strong jaws. The jaws open and shut sideways like a pair of scissors. Adult ants cannot chew and swallow solid food. Instead they swallow the juice which they squeeze from pieces of food. They throw away the dry part that is left over. The ant has two eyes, each eye is made of many smaller eyes.
3	They are called compound eyes. The abdomen of the ant contains two stomachs. One stomach holds the food for itself and second stomach is for food to be shared with other ants. Like all insects, the outside of their body is covered with a hard armour this is called the exoskeleton. Ants have four distinct growing stages, the egg, larva, pupa and the adult. Biologists classify ants as a special group of wasps. (Hymenoptera Formicidae) There are over 10000 known species of ants. Each ant colony has at least one or more queens.
4	The job of the queen is to lay eggs which the worker ants look after. Worker ants are sterile, they look for food, look after the young, and defend the nest from unwanted visitors. Ants are clean and tidy insects. Some worker ants are given the job of taking the rubbish from the nest and putting it outside in a special rubbish dump! Each colony of ants has its own smell. In this way, intruders can be recognized immediately. Many ants such as the common Red species have a sting which they use to defend their nest.
5	The common Black Ants and Wood Ants have no sting, but they can squirt a spray of formic acid. Some birds put ants in their feathers because the ants squirt formic acid which gets rid of the parasites. The Slave-Maker Ant (Polyergus Rufescens) raids the nests of other ants and steals their pupae. When these new ants hatch,they work as slaves within the colony. The worker ants keep the eggs and larvae in different groups according to ages.
6	At night the worker ants move the eggs and larvae deep into the nest to protect them from the cold. During the daytime, the worker ants move the eggs and larvae of the colony to the top of the nest so that they can be warmer. If a worker ant has found a good source for food, it leaves a trail of scent so that the other ants in the colony can find the food. Army Ants are nomadic and they are always moving. They carry their larvae and their eggs with them in a long column.
7	The Army Ant (Ecitron Burchelli) of South America, can have as many as 700,000 members in its colony. The Leaf Cutter Ants are farmers. They cut out pieces of leaves which they take back to their nests. They chew them into a pulp and a special fungus grows it. Ants cannot digest leaves because they cannot digest cellulose. Many people think ants are a pest but I like them. To stop them coming into my kitchen I put some sugar outside. They they have so much to eat that they are not interested in coming into my kitchen.

Ants are my favourite animal, I think they are so cool and when they get together they are super clever but when there on there own they just walk around aimlessly kind of like 1 brain cell when its on its own its useless but when they come together they can do unbelievably clever things.


Ants evolved from wasp like creatures 130 million years ago even before the rise of flowering plants. There are around 22 000 species found and you can easily identify an ant by their elbowed antennae and distinctive structure that forms a slender waist. The main species that everyone knows are the black ant, the red ant, argentine ants, pharaoh ants, wood ants, Carpenter ants and killer ants. The winged ant are just normal ants which grow wings for what is proven as the nuptial flight, this is where the This is where the young queens are fertilized, as soon as this has happened the queen breaks off her wings by biting them and becomes your normal ant again being ready to start her own nest where she can continue to lay eggs for up to 15 years, the males usually die soon after mating. There are carnivorous, herbivorous and omnivorous species

Ants form colonies that range in size from a few dozen predatorily individuals living in small natural cavities to highly organised colonies which may occupy large territories and have millions of little ants. These larger colonies consist of mainly wingless females forming castes of working ants or soldier ants, just like in the film ‘ants’. Nearly all ants’ colonies also have some fertile males called drones and also one or more fertile female called queens. The colonies are sometimes described as super organisms because they all collectively work together to support their colony.

The only place on Earth where ants don’t live is Antarctica and a few remote inhospitable islands but apart from that they have colonised almost every landmass on Earth.

In a lot of species their favourite food is honeydew, which they milk from Aphids, which has high sugar content. When an ant finds a food source it will lay a scent trail back to the nest, where it will communicate with other workers by tapping antennae and also giving some of the food from it's crop, these workers in turn will then be able to locate the food. And that’s why I always find them in my fizzy drinks.