Queen of the red ant

I had once seen the queen of the red ant in our flower pot that my father had planted at the corridor.

The colour of the red ant queen is not red colour, but it is in yellow and black colour. Its size is 2 times more bigger than ordinary red ant that we see. It also have wings, but it did not fly at all. It does not look like any red ant, but looks more like a bee.

The first time we see it, it did not move at all. We are able to see its head, as it is hiding in a hole. When we see it, we use a stick to disturb it. But it does not move at all, no matter what ways we use to disturb it. So we thought that it is already dead. So we do not bother about it.

Time has passes really really long after that. So long that we had already totally forget about the queen red ant(I think there is at least few years passed).

Until one fine day, when my brother is watering the plants, he sees that queen ant again. The queen ant is still in the same position, and it is no moving. So my brother decided to take out the dead corpse to examine what is it.

In surprise, the queen red ant actually move. The queen ant had revived after being "dead" for a few years.

From that time onwards, it is no longer inactive anymore. It is active all the time. It keeps moving about. We had no idea what it is trying to do, as it seems that the queen is busy on something.

We observed very closely to it everyday. A few days later, we see some eggs being laid inside the hole. We are very curious about the eggs, and we are wondering what kind of creatures might come out of the egg, as we have not seen such a creature before.

For the few days, it keeps protecting its egg. We tried to disturb the queen, but it is very fierce. When we use a stick to poke it, it keeps bitting on the stick and refuses to let go. My brother keep struggling the stick slowly for a long time, then it let go. Of course, at this time, we are still unable to tell what kind of creature this is.

Few days later, the eggs finally hatched. A group of around 10 red ants came out. Those red ants keep staying near the queen ant, and they do not move away from the queen to search for food or whatever. When we uses the stick to disturb them, those red ants will try to attack the stick, trying to protect their own territory.

They do not go around to hunt for food, so we "pity" them and we throw some food bits into the hole. The food drops into the bottom of the hole, but they did not went down to collect those food. Poor ants.

A few days later, there is a very very heavy rain. It nearly flood the whole of our corridor. After the rain stop, we decided to go outside and see the progress of the red ants. In shock, those red ants, including the red ant queen, are dead(This time the dead is real). The heavy rain has "flood" the entire hole, and the queen is being totally sinked into the hole filled with water.

We are very sad at that time, as we are unable to see how the queen ant progress, and we also cannot see the whole formation of the ant's empire. After staying in our flower pot for few years, it just left like that. We feel very sad. We hope that there will still be another queen that can come to our flower pot, perhaps next time we can put the flower pot under an umbrella, so that their home would not be flood.