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.