Ant scramble

'Way back in 2012, when we still lived in the Lower Mainland, I turned over a board in the vacant lot across the street, and discovered a colony of scurrying ants. I took photos and posted them on the blog that week, and went back a couple of times again to check on them. The last time, I took photos and a video.

Ants, pupae, and larvae in the blaze of unwanted sunlight.

Then my old software couldn't cope with the video, and I was busy, so I put it all aside for "later".

It is now later.

The ants scurried about grabbing pupae and larvae, hauling them here and there, seemingly with no notion of where to hide them until they found a hole leading underground. And of course, another dozen ants with their pupae were trying to cram them down the same hole, sometimes pushing out the one ahead of them in line. Somehow, somehow, they managed to get all the youngsters to safety. And then I carefully replaced their board roof, so they had to haul them all up the tunnels again.

The second and the third times I visited, the colony was thriving, so they coped with those brief episodes of glare and panic well. I wonder, though, if they didn't afterwards have ant nightmares.

On that first post, all those years ago, I wrote this:

Ant adults are like the stylish women of my grandmother's youth; their waists are too tightly constricted for good digestion, my grandmother's and her friends' with those tightly laced whalebone corsets (Nana, a teenager at the turn of the 20th century, boasted that she had an 18-inch waist; no wonder women had fainting spells!), the ants with a threadlike petiole that won't allow solid food to reach the digestive organs. Mature ants can only eat liquids.
The larvae are not so restricted, having no waists at all. So the worker ants bring them solid foodstuffs, which are pre-digested by the larvae, and harvested by the workers in liquid form. The system works, keeping the workers motivated, and the larvae well fed.

Some of the larvae are small; others are as large as, or even larger than the adults.They may be destined to be future queens.

The larvae have no legs but are capable of some minor movement, such as bending their head toward a food source when fed. During this stage, the level of care and nourishment the larvae receive will determine their eventual adult form. When resources are low, all larvae will develop into female worker ants; however, if the parent of a sexually reproducing colony has a plentiful supply of food, some of the larvae will receive better nourishment than others, and develop into winged, sexually mature female ants destined to leave the colony. (Wikipedia) 

A queen ant may live up to 30 years. I wonder if that old board is still lying in the vacant lot, with its busy city underneath.