What Are Fire Ants?

Fire Ants are also known as Myrmica Rubra are a red and brown coloured ant. Known for stinging and biting people and pets for accidental disturbing a nest. They are extremely aggressive ant species with a length of 4 to 6mm. Did you know that red fire ant workers pack a painful sting and will attack anything that disturbs them in defence. Fire ants are pests to the public however, to ant keepers they have become one of the most favourite ant species to keep as pets.

The scientific name of the fire ant is Myrmica Rubra. You can find Fire ants living under stones, piles of pine leaves and underneath logs. This species of ant is very active all throughout the year. During the late summer when the weather is much more humid and hot they begin there mating cycle. During that time of the year, you can see flying red ants, red male flying ants and red queen flying ants. Once mating is complete the new fire ant queens will then find a new home to start a colony.

How To Identify a Fire Ant

The name of the fire ant says it all. If you can picture a red coloured ant then this is exactly what the fire ant looks like. It’s a red colour with a slight hint of brown on the fire ant body and a darker colour head usually brown to black. It is a medium-sized ant species and can easily be identified by its colouring. Please see the photo below of a fire ant.

What Do Fire Ants Eat?

Fire ants eat a wide range of foods. Insects, meats and anything sweet will suit the taste buds of a fire ant. Insects include ticks, spiders, other ant species, worms, crickets just about anything that falls prey to these ants. They also like to feed on vegetation such as berries and seeds. Once they have the food they will take it back to the nest to feed the other ants inside of the nests. This ensures the survival of the colony and queen egg production.

Do Fire Ants Have One Queen?

Fire Ants are an ant species that can have multi queen ants. I myself have a colony of Myrimca Rubra ants and it has 8 queen ants in the colony all reproducing eggs. This is one of the reasons the fire ant species can have a colony of 1000s of workers. They can even add additional queens in the future for colony growth.

Are you looking to get into keeping ants as pets?. Why not take a look around our ant farm shop based in the UK.