What Happens When A Queen Ant Dies?

What Happens If A Queen Ant Dies?

Depending on the species of ant a queen dying can cause the entire colony to perish. If a queen ant dies, let’s say for a colony where there is only one queen ant. Then eventually all the worker ants will die after 3 to 4 months. This is because there is no longer a reproductive queen ant that can lay eggs to continue the colonies growth. On rare occasions, some worker ants can live up to 1 year without a queen and die off slowly one by one. Kind of sad I know.

In some tropical species of ant, they have young female princes’ queen ants in the nest that are dormant. So in the event that the queen dies. They challenge each other to a duel until one is the victor and then it becomes the new queen ant of the colony. This ensures that the colony can continue growing if the main queen ant dies.

Colonies that have more than one productive queen are colonies that don’t have much to worry about if one queen dies. These types of colonies can have up to 10 to 25 queens. Yes up to 25 reproductive queen ants all at the same time. That is one massive ant colony that I wouldn’t like to mess with. If one of these queens were to die it wouldn’t really affect the colony much. All the other queens would just simply carry on laying eggs keeping the colony growing.

I sure hope this is answered your question about what happens if a queen ant dies. to see my video on this click on the video below. Thanks for reading.

AntManUK