Did you know that ant colonies have a queen bet do not have a king? The ant monarchy is totally unfair in my opinion! Unlike monarchies in the human species, members of an ant colony all have specific tasks to perform for the good of the whole. The only job a queen has in an ant colony is to lay eggs and continue the species. A colony cannot exist without at least one queen. Carpenter ants only have one queen. This is called monogyne ant species, While other species of ants may have several queens and are called polygyne species. Human royalty is understood as a person with power. An ant queen really does not have power. She is just the mother of all the individuals in the colony. All the colony members owe the queen is to feed her so she can lay more eggs. Males or drones only exist to breed the queen, and then die. The female can store male sperm and use it later to fertilize her eggs and produce thousands of young. In other words, the queen does not need a king except to impregnate her. All the workers are females and perform all the work involved in the colony like building nests, foraging for food and waste disposal in the colony. Just in case the queen dies, nature delegates the queen title to another female. If another queen is not created in the monogyne species, the colony will collapse and will die out.
