round, twist off their now useless wings, and scamper across the surface of the warm wet ground, looking for a place to burrow. The vast majority of the queens fall victim to a barrage of predators including birds, lizards, spiders and especially, other ants. Surviving queens must be well below ground before the rising sun relentlessly dries and bakes the surface. The queens seal themselves inside humid, subterranean cavities and do not forage; rather, they rear their first brood of tiny workers, called nanitics, relying solely on their stored fat reserves and metabolized flight muscles. Colony growth is slow at first, but soon rapidly accelerates as additional ants are added to the worker force.
Honey ant nests almost always have only a single surface opening surrounded by a small accumulation of excavated substrate. Each species has a characteristic nest entrance. For example, M. mimicus builds a low sandy mound while M. mexicanus constructs a turret of coarse gravel. Nest openings of the latter species are very distinctive and not easily confused with those built by other kinds of ants in the area. The amount of soil surrounding a honey ant nest entrance is deceptively small, for the nest tunnels and chambers frequently extend deep into the ground, often reaching several yards or more below the surface. Nests of M. mexicanus have been studied in detail and have a surprisingly distinct and seemingly adaptive architecture. The nests typically are built in hard rocky soil, and consist of a subsurface labyrinth of tunnels and a vertical array of small domed chambers interconnected by one narrow vertical passageway. The maze of tunnels just below the surface probably serves as a staging area for foraging parties and mating flights and as a site for brood incubation. The lower chambers, deep enough to be within the level of permanent soil moisture, house the queen, much of the worker population and the majority of repletes. The lone interconnecting passage probably makes individual nest chambers easier to defend or seal off from enemy invaders.
Honey ants are generalized scavengers and predators. Sugary carbohydrates are needed for energy. The ants visit flowers and extrafloral nectaries for the sweet rewards, and "milk" homopterans like aphids and scale insects for their sugary exudations called honeydew. Once engorged with liquid sugar, workers return to their nest to share with other colony members.
Protein sources also are necessary, particularly for the growing larvae. Foraging honey ants search for live or recently dead invertebrates, predominantly arthropods; small soft-bodied insects like termites and caterpillars are especially fair game. Individual workers head homeward with pieces of food clasped within their mandibles, while groups of workers may cooperate when retrieving large or struggling prey items.
Like all formicine ants, honey ants lack stingers: rather, they spray fine droplets of formic acid from their abdominal tip. The caustic acid is used, along with pinching mandibles, to help subdue uncooperative prey or to deter colony enemies. Grappling with prey or facing off against their foes, attacking honey ants spread and brace their legs, rapidly curl their abdomens underneath pointing forward, aim and fire. Their chemical weaponry is most effective against small targets; it is useful against mammals or other large animals only if sprayed into highly sensitive tissues like eyes or nostrils.
Given an abundance of sweet repletes, it is not surprising that badgers and other desert creatures sometimes burrow into and plunder honey ant nests. Even some honey ant colonies will raid one another, stealing not only repletes but also brood, that when mature, is "enslaved" as part of the pirating colony's worker force.
As recently as early this century, various Native American tribes and Mexicans regularly excavated honey ant colonies to obtain the savory morsels stockpiled therein. Sweet-toothed human predators typically hold a replete's head and thorax with the fingers, bite off or rupture the fragile abdomen, then