What is the nests size of the red wood ant?
Red Wood Ants are usually considered by colony. One colony can consist of as many as half a million individuals, but is still generally considered one life form. The Red Wood Ant, “Formica rufa”, often forms communes in the United States of a few to over twenty in dependant nests.Collectively the population of communes can reach several million workers and a few hundred Queens. On the continent the closely related F. polyctina is much more locally abundant, has many thousands of Queens in the same nests and their communes contain ants too numerous to count. Red Wood Ants are primarily found in Europe and Asia, with a distribution as far North as Scandinavia, south to Italy and west to Russia. Formica Sanguinea can also be found in Japan, China and Korea. Formica sanguinea, is by far one of the most intelligent insects alive today and typically enslaves smaller Formica species such as the Negro ant, Formica fusca and its relatives e.g. Formica cumnnicularia. F.
