Over the past few weeks, my winter ant brood piles have been growing steadily. This particular pair of queens now have a brood pile of roughly thirty eggs and possibly a couple of larvae. There were originally three queens, but one was removed because she wasn’t fertile. This meant the two fertile queens are free to grow their brood without fear of a nonfertile queen eating the brood, which can sometimes happen when such ants are left unchecked. I was already aware of this problem, so I fixed it before it manifested itself.