What is the life cycle of an ant?
Ant colonies survive around a single queen ant; she is the only sexually mature female and the only ant capable of reproducing other ants. The worker ants (sterile females) protect the queen, tend the newly laid eggs and feed the larvae within the nest. Throughout the year, if undisturbed, the number of workers will increase quite rapidly. Once a year the queen will produce sexually mature male and female ants within the nest that will emerge to the surface and ‘swarm’ in large numbers. The intention of this is to mate with the males who die shortly afterwards, with the females (queens) flying off to start a colony of their own.
