Help us find the queen ant! The Fire Nation, our massive, aggressive, stinging colony of red tropical fire ants (Solenopsis geminata) has officially moved into their new Hybrid Nest 2.0 formicarium, and how they have organized themselves inside is truly amazing! It has made for the perfect conditions to hunt for the most important member of the ant colony: the queen ant! In this video we go searching for the queen ant of the colony, as well as take a unique look at what happens inside an ant nest.

Please Help Me Find the Queen Fire Ant

Fire Ants galore! Check out our Fire Nation, our huge colony of red tropical fire ants. They’ve officially moved into their new formicarium from last week’s video, and boy, is it busy in there! For the first time in almost a year, we get to see what happens inside an ant nest, but my main goal today is to try to spot the queen ant. We will also be voting for an official name for this new Fire Nation lair. You won’t want to miss this epic fire ant queen hunt as we scour the chambers and tunnels, sort through the young, and attempt to locate the mother of this massive colony in this episode of the AntsCanada Ant Channel. Please subscribe to my channel and hit the bell icon. Welcome to the AC Family. Enjoy!

So, in case you didn’t tune in to our last video, we recently introduced some fresh territory to the Fire Nation. We added our new AC Hybrid Nest 2.0 to their current living network of tubes, tubs, and outworlds. It was an incredible and hi-tech addition to their home, and they began to establish highways within the new nest. So, let’s check up on their progress one week later, shall we? Whoa! Check out all those ants! They really love this new nest. Alright, AC Family, before we continue, I have placed my top 5 picks from your name suggestions for this new nest in an iPoll here, so please take a moment to vote for your favorite name. This will help us determine what to call this new, very popular area of the Fire Nation. By the way, AC Family, I know all too well how sharp some of your eyes are at catching details, so I’ll need your help. Throughout this video, if you see the queen or think you see her, be sure to point her out in the comments and leave a timestamp for us all to check out. Look at how they’ve organized themselves in here. Isn’t it just incredible how many ants have managed to pack themselves in here? Wow! The Fire Nation is truly majestic. This nest is absolutely alive and active! The fire ants enter and exit the nest through openings here… and here… Check out how heavily guarded each of these nest openings is. It’s important that there are large groups of ants simply waiting around the exits, ready to engage in battle at a single alarm, because inside the nest lays the valuable young and their queen, possibly. And if she is in here, I’m determined to find her.

Let’s check the rooms! Look at that flow of workers. It’s amazing to watch them follow organized highways and not simply march everywhere randomly. It’s great traffic efficiency. In this chamber, you will see a huge brood pile. Those whitish things that look like rice are all pupae—teenage ants in their developmental stage prior to becoming full-grown, fully formed ants. They are immobile and helpless and rely on the workers to care for and transport them during this period of their lives. They remain in this phase for several days and then become workers that survive for about 3 weeks to a month. The total lifespan of a worker ant is actually about 1–2 months. This means that every couple of months, the colony you see in these videos will all be dead and replaced with new workers. Every couple of months, this fire ant colony is essentially a new colony, except for one member: the queen. I don’t see her here. Do you? The queen is the only one who survives for many years. The record for a queen ant in captivity is almost 30 years. Talk about the saying “Long Live the Queen!”

Here is another brood room, also mostly pupae. Though it may seem like the pupae are the most abundant form of brood in this nest, don’t be fooled. There are also lots of eggs and larvae stashed around in this nest, but because they are smaller and less conspicuous, they’re easier to hide away. Here is one such room. Workers have decided to fill this room with larvae of different stages and probably lots of eggs as well. The larvae and eggs also depend on the workers—who, by the way, are their sisters—to care for, feed, and transport them around. Wanna hear something amazing about the larvae, AC Family? Each larva is fed, and as it grows, its waste collects inside its body. Then, only right before it pupates to become a pupa, it finally releases the built-up poop in a fecal pellet known as a meconium. Yes, ant babies only poop once in their entire lives, and it is all in a compact fecal pellet, which actually remains attached to the pupa shell. This is evolutionary brilliance because, inside an ant nest where there are many members and it is moist, things can get dangerously infested with bacteria and mold. So, having that one meconium per larva and having it packaged up on the outside of the pupa means ant baby poop isn’t just sitting around. Everything is sterile, and it’s truly an amazing biological ant feature.

Let’s continue looking for our queen. Check out this huge room and all the brood in here. Something tells me if our queen is in this formicarium, she would be hiding somewhere here. I don’t think the queen would be near any of the entrances, as this would be dangerous for her. She’s got to be in the heart of the nest somewhere. There are some rooms in the nest that the ants have not occupied. This room here has been elected as the bathroom of the colony. Ants enter and leave as needed. Some privacy, please! These rooms lead to one of the water test tubes. Not too many ants are drinking from this one. But this one is a popular watering hole, it seems. Perhaps they’re trying to keep the second test tube as clean as possible by drinking first from this test tube. Who knows? Here you will see one of the highway crossroads within the nest. Ants in this area are moving in all directions. Each of those ants is on their own mission.

To be honest, I really miss watching the action inside the nest. It’s just as interesting as watching external ant activity in their outworlds. Now, you might notice that some of the brood are yellowish-orange in color. These are the pupae that are ready to eclose, meaning the adult ants are ready to emerge from their pupal stage. Newly formed adults start off as a yellowish-orange color. Then, over time, as their exoskeleton hardens, they turn a dark red color. This process is called tanning. Check out this room. This is one of the rooms with the perforated floors, allowing for the humidity to enter the nest from below. The Hybrid Nest’s hydration chambers are beneath the nest, as you may have seen in our previous video. The ants make sure not to cover this too much to allow for the moisture to enter the nest.

I continued to check out the rooms as closely as I could but could not find the queen. What I’m looking for is a larger ant with a fat gaster—the technical term for the abdomen or ant butt—as well as a cohort of worker ants around her. Often, she is seen as a head and thorax with a swelling of worker ants around her gaster. It’s a bit difficult to find the queen because they hide her well, but also, it’s easy to mistake the majors for the queen. The ants with the massive heads are the majors, specialized workers at cutting things open with their huge, muscled mandibles. I find the omnipresence of the majors makes finding the queen a bit challenging.

I truly love this nest, and in the past several months, I have been housing my ant colonies in natural nests. But with this dirtless formicarium, I can actually come super close to the ants and not bother them nor have to worry about being stung. By the way, guys, these Hybrid Nests are available now, and I have placed a link to them at our store in the description box. If you’ve been wanting to start ant keeping, you must have a look at them. They’re reliable, easy to use, and we ship them worldwide!

AC Family, I am not seeing the queen anywhere. Perhaps she hasn’t moved in yet. What do you guys think? Let’s just take some time to look, shall we? Here we go. Keep your eyes peeled, AC Family! To be honest, if the queen is anywhere in here, I feel she would be in this room because I see a lot of eggs being kept around here. For 5 hours, I did my best to check all areas of the nest for any signs of the queen, but to no avail. I swear she’s in here, but perhaps she’s deciding not to let herself be seen this time around. Did any of you guys spot her? If you did, let us know in the comments. I, too, will keep rewatching this video to find her! Otherwise, I’ll keep my eyes open over the next few days and film her if I do manage to catch a glimpse of her royal ant highness. Thank you for watching another episode of the AntsCanada Ant Channel. Until next time, AC Family, this is AntsCanada signing out. It’s ant love forever! Alright, AC Family, wasn’t this like one big Where’s Waldo challenge? AC Inner Colony, I have left a hidden cookie for you here if you would like to watch extended play footage of the fire ants living inside their new formicarium. And now it’s time for the AC Question of the Week! Last week, we asked: What does an ant colony do when their current nest gets too dirty or too lived in? Congratulations to Lorcan Cooper, who correctly answered: They dig new tunnels and abandon the old ones or completely move out. Congratulations, Lorcan Cooper! You just won a brand new, free Hybrid Nest 2.0 formicarium from our shop! This week’s AC Question of the Week: What is the name for the fecal pellet expelled prior to pupation in an ant’s development? Leave your answer in the comments section, and you could win a free ant t-shirt from our shop! Hope you can subscribe to the channel as we upload every Saturday at 8 AM EST. Please remember to LIKE, COMMENT, SHARE, and SUBSCRIBE if you enjoyed this video to help us keep making more. It’s ant love forever!