Fire ant queens. Even if only one queen survives, within a month or so, the colony can expand to thousands of individuals. Some colonies may be polygynous (having multiple queens per nest). Fire ants are resilient and can survive floods. During Hurricane Harvey in Texas in 2017, clumps of fire ants, known as rafts, were seen clumped together on the surface of the water. Each clump had as many as 100,000 individual ants, which formed a temporary structure until finding a new permanent home. Fire ant queens, the reproductive females in their colony, also are generally the largest. Their primary function is
Red imported fire ant segregate brood by their age and caste, which is followed by licking, grooming and antennation. If a colony is under attack, workers will release alarm pheromones. However, these pheromones are poorly developed in workers. Workers can detect pyrazines which are produced by the alates; these pyrazines may be involved in nuptial flight, as well as an alarm response. Red imported fire ants can distinguish nestmates and non-nestmates through chemical communication and specific colony odours. Workers prefer to dig into nest materials from their own colony and not from soil in unnested areas or from other red imported fire ant colonies.