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everyday, run-of-the-mill ant. Early season, workers are about 0.1
inch long, just lengthy enough to span the letter “t” on this page.
But as the season progresses and winter ants stock up on food,
they become easier to identify.
Photo Gallery - Spring is in the air
To say a winter ant has a lot of “junk in her trunk” mid and late
season is an understatement. When workers eat their favorite
protein foods like insects and a sugary substance produced by
other insects called honeydew, they stockpile the calories in
special fat cells in their bums. These fat cells can grow to be
tremendous; ant baby got back as it were. Because they waddle
around with swollen rumps at the end of the season, some
people call winter ants “false honeypot ants.”
To understand why they pack on the pounds, let’s poke our heads
down into their rabbit hole. Winter ant colonies survive
underground all summer on their rotund sisters’ fat. Their ample
behinds are the world’s best refrigerators. Because fat cells are
part of living tissue, as long as the worker is alive, the fat won’t rot
like dead insects stored in the nest would. And because the fat is
already concentrated and high in calories, workers don’t have to
process it like they would other foods. Winter ants store enough
fat in their portly posteriors to feed each other and all the babies
that emerge as adults the following fall. When workers unseal
their nests in the fall, they emerge as Skinny Minnies again.
The winter ant queen, in all her glory! - © Alex Wild
Home Deep Home
Let’s travel a little deeper down the rabbit hole. While its worker
inhabitants live a couple of years at most, winter ant nests can
exist more than 10 years. The older the nest, the deeper it is. If
we were winter ants crawling down into our home, we would
enter through a short hallway leading to the first room. Other than
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