After mating, she will scurry off to find a new location for her nest, lose her wings and lay her first clutch of eggs. A queen ant will leave the colony she was born into and mate with flying male ants.
First, queens are the founders of all ant colonies. Queen ants have two main responsibilities. What is the Queen Ant’s Role in the Colony? Once a queen ant reaches maturity, she can live a very long life - up to 30 years with some ant species. Influencing factors include the environmental conditions and the species. This metamorphosis can take weeks or months to complete. Female ants that were fed more royal jelly when they were larvae later become queen. Just as caterpillars eventually transform into butterflies, individual ants grow into one of three roles within the colony: queen, worker or male. The ant life cycle proceeds through several stages of metamorphosis. If you've ever encountered an ant with wings, you've been in the presence of a potential ant queen (or king). However, not all female ants are capable of reproduction. These eggs are also part of the mechanism that allows ant populations to number in the thousands and millions. Related > All About Insect Queens Do Ants Lay Eggs?Īnts are oviparous animals, meaning they reproduce by laying, fertilizing and hatching eggs.
