On a walk trying to find queen ants, I was walking along a strip of pavement where I had previously seen Formica nests, and found a monster nest entrance! This indicated that their first nuptial flight of the year was potentially days away. The workers enlarge the nest holes to allow queen and male alates to leave the nest and fly off on their nuptial flights.
On that same walk, I also found a random male alate walking around, which was a sure sign that some sort of ants had flown that day (several minutes later I found a little queen ant). The male alate’s sole purpose in the ant world is to fertilize young queens, who will hopefully then start a colony.
