On the fourth of July, I was at a relative’s pool, and I saw something floating in the water. When I scooped it up, I realized it was a queen ant! I quickly put her on a clean tissue to dry her off, then placed her in a snap cap. I found four of those little queens in that pool, all of whom were placed in test tube setups when I got home. Amazingly, the very next day, one of them had eggs! Only five days after I rescued them from drowning, all of them have brood. I then began researching these ants in order to identify them. I had never seen this species before, and I learned that they were Monomorium minimum queens. This species is highly polygynous, but I didn’t combine any because I did not know what they were at the time. Once I knew what species these ants are, I began trying to find their diet, which turned out to be typical of most other ants. I found these queen ants to be rather cute, so I will definitely keep a colony of them.
The queen in the image above has shed three wings, and I realized that ants, similar to bees and wasps, have four wings that hook together to provide a larger overall surface area, which helps the insect fly faster. This makes sense since ants evolved from wasps, and queens and males need to fly reasonably fast in order to find a mate in less time, which reduces nuptial flight casualties to a decent extent.
