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
Fire ant United States. It is estimated that 30%-60% of the people living in fire ant-infested areas of the US are stung each year. RIFA are currently found mainly in subtropical southeastern USA states including Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and parts of North Carolina, Virginia, Tennessee, Arkansas, Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, and California. Since September 2004 Taiwan has been seriously affected by the red fire ant. The US, Taiwan and Australia all have ongoing national programs to control or eradicate the species, but, except for Australia, none have been especially effective. In Australia, there is an intensive program costing