Bull Ant Colony Life: Hunting Queens and Workers That Become Mothers

Nov 3

2 min read

Updated: 1 day ago

A bull ant colony works in a surprisingly old-fashioned way. Queens hunt for their own food, workers can become mothers, and colonies stay small compared with many other ants. Here is how life inside a bull ant colony works.

Myrmecia gulosa bull ant — Myrmecia gulosa, one of the giant bull ants.

Small colonies

Bull ant colonies range from about 50 to more than 2,000 individuals. A colony with fewer than 100 workers is not yet considered mature. Compared with the hundreds of thousands of ants in a wood ant mound, that is small.

The nuptial flight

Winged queens and males appear in the nests around January, in the Australian summer. Nuptial flights usually take place between January and early April, often on hot, stormy days. Up to a thousand males can gather in one place, and a queen may mate with one to ten males. In some species, such as Myrmecia pulchra, the queens cannot fly and mate on the ground.

A queen who hunts

After mating, a young bull ant queen digs a small nest, but she does not stay locked inside. She regularly goes out to hunt and brings back insects for her first larvae. Sometimes several queens start a nest together, but they usually fight until only one remains.

One queen or several

That differs per species. The jumper ant Myrmecia nigrocincta has one queen per colony, while the jack jumper Myrmecia pilosula often has several unrelated queens living together. Jack jumper queens can live for ten years or more.

Workers that become mothers

In many bull ant species, workers can mate and lay fertilised eggs. Such workers are called gamergates. Workers can also lay unfertilised eggs, which develop into males. Researchers once kept a colony of Myrmecia pyriformis without a queen that kept producing new workers for three years.

Eggs as food

In some species, such as Myrmecia gulosa, workers lay special eggs that never hatch. These trophic eggs are food, often for the queen and the larvae.

Hunters feeding carnivores

Adult bull ants live mainly on sweet liquids, but the larvae need meat. Workers hunt alone and bring prey back to the nest, where the larvae eat it. Read more in how bull ants hunt.

How long do they live?

Worker lifespans differ per species: a jack jumper worker lives around a year and a few months on average, while workers of Myrmecia nigriceps can live more than two years.