410 INTRODUCTION TO ZOOLOGY chap. 



of the ground to the outside world ; they bring in fresh food 

 and set to work to feed their mother, after which they at 

 once begin to enlarge the burrow in all directions. As fresh 

 eggs are laid, these workers undertake the whole care of them 

 and the nurture of the larvae. 



The queen is able now, therefore, to give herself up entirely 

 to the work of adding to the numbers of the colony, and, fed 

 and tended by her offspring, she may live for many years — an 

 ant queen has been kept alive in captivity for fifteen years. 

 The colony grows in number to thousands, and each year it 

 sends off swarms of winged forms, amongst which are the 

 queens who may form new colonies. The forming of a new 

 colony is, however, obviously an arduous task, and very many 

 of the young queens perish in the attempt. 



Occasionally, though rarely, two young queens may alight 

 on the earth close together after their marriage flight, and 

 form a colony together; and sometimes, as has been said 

 above, a young queen will return to her original home, where 

 she is welcomed by the workers and allowed to remain by the 

 old queen ; hence, unlike the case in bees, it is not an unusual 

 thing to find an ants' nest with two, three, or even more 

 queens, all equally cared for, and all busily adding to their 

 united colony. 



In some species of the genus Formica, as many as fifty 

 queens may exist in one nest. In such a case there was 

 probably no marriage flight, but the new young queens, 

 their wings having been removed by the workers,^ were 

 forcibly retained within the nest, the marriage union taking 

 place underground. 



Ants are extremely fond of sweet juices, and 

 the iLnt ^°'' *^'^ reason they are friends to certain species 

 of green-fly (Aphides), which, when they have 

 been actively feeding, excrete from the end of the body a 

 sweet juice known as honey-dew. (The substance secreted 

 from the two little tubes, which project near the end of the 

 body, is not honey-dew, though it is often mistakenly de- 

 scribed as such.) The ant runs after the Aphis, and, by 

 gently stroking its body with her antennae, she induces it to 

 give out this honey-dew, which she then licks up greedily. 

 The special Aphis which the Yellow Meadow Ant favours is 



^ Wteeler, p. 191. 



