Pharaoh ant new nest is formed, queens are not a necessity; workers can raise new queens after finding a suitable nest site. In pharaoh ant colonies new males and queen ants can be produced when the existing fertile queen is removed. When queens are absent, the workers in the nest can do two things: either rear existing sexual larvae or transport sexual larvae from other bud nests or from the main nest to its own nest. However, when there are fertile queens still within the nest, the worker ants will cannibalize the sexual larvae and will either reject or consume sexual larvae
Pharaoh ant Pharaoh ant is a polygynous species that has a relatively low worker to queen ratio of around 12.86. This allows the pharaoh ants to be able to exert social control over the size of the colony and the size of each caste. In the average nest, there are around 170 ± 8 queens every nest, which comprises around 5.2% of the total population, whereas there are around 2185 ± 49 workers, which make up around 66.6% of the population. This low worker to queen ratio is usually associated with swift changes in the nest and may be why pharaoh ants