A queen ant is an adult, reproducing female ant in an ant colony; generally she will be the mother of all the other ants in that colony. Some female ants do not need to mate to produce offspring, reproducing through asexual parthenogenesis or cloning, and all of those offspring will be female. Ant offspring develop from larvae specially fed in order to become sexually mature among most species. Depending on the species, there can be either a single mother queen, or potentially, hundreds of fertile queens in some species. Queen ants have one of the longest life-spans of any known insect – up to 28 years in captivity.
Famous quotes containing the words queen and/or ant:
“We have defined a story as a narrative of events arranged in their time-sequence. A plot is also a narrative of events, the emphasis falling on causality. “The king died and then the queen died” is a story. “The king died, and then the queen died of grief” is a plot. The time sequence is preserved, but the sense of causality overshadows it.”
—E.M. (Edward Morgan)
“Before me you are a slug in the sun. You are privy to a great becoming and you recognize nothing. You are an ant in the afterbirth. It is in your nature to do one thing correctly: tremble.”
—Michael Mann, U.S. screenwriter. Frances Dollarhyde, aka “The Tooth Fairy” (Tom Noonan)