Why Can’t Ants Live Without a Queen?
WouterWhether you are interested in ants as pets, or are just curious about their biology, it is important to understand the role a queen plays in an ant colony. Without a queen, the colony will slowly die. Normally, each colony has only one queen, but in some cases, a super colony can have multiple queens, up to a million.
Each queen lays hundreds to thousands of eggs every day. These eggs don’t need to be fertilized to produce offspring. The queen will place half of the genetic material in each egg. Eventually, the larvae will develop into a new queen. This process can take years. The colony will continue to survive without a queen, but it will have a limited amount of time to live.
When a queen dies, the workers in the colony begin to die off. Without a queen, workers cannot reproduce, and the colony will die. The colony will also stop producing eggs. The workers will still hunt for food, but the food supply will be limited.
Queens are very large, usually two or three times larger than other ants in the colony. They also have wings. The wings make it easier to identify a queen. Most queens shed their wings when they are no longer needed.
A queen can live for decades. In lab colonies, queen ants can survive for up to thirty years. Some queens have been known to lay millions of eggs in their lifetimes.
