sible for colony labor.
Worker honey ants are polymorphic, meaning that they come in different sizes, ranging ten-fold or more in body weight. This variation, in turn, permits more effective task specialization. For example, the smallest workers, called minims, tend to remain in the nest as nursemaids caring for the queen, the developing brood (eggs, larvae and pupae) and the repletes. Medium and larger size workers are more apt to be involved with nest excavation, food acquisition and colony defense. The largest workers, called majors, are the individuals most likely to develop into repletes. Honey ant colonies are coordinated largely by pheromones, glandular secretions produced by the ants that function as chemical signals. Pheromones regulate complex social behavior and broadly serve to identify colony members, recruit nestmates to food sources, and elicit alarm and defensive behaviors. For example, honey ant workers instantly distinguish nestmates from intruders based on their smell (colony odor); the former might be groomed and offered food while the latter would be attacked and killed or driven from the nest.
Honey ant societies may also contain numerous non-working reproductive forms, or winged males and virgin queens. Winged forms, called alates, are produced when colony populations reach an optimal size and become reproductively mature. Then, a portion of the brood raised each year is converted into individuals designed to mate, disperse and start new colonies. Mating flights typically are nocturnal or crepuscular, and generally occur only once a year following the first heavy precipitation of the summer rainy season.
The reproductive forms pour out of the nest and swarm into the air, mating on the fly. Young queens take only one mating flight; they store viable sperm long-term in a special organ, called a spermatheca, which is then used for fertilizing eggs throughout the remainder of their lives.
The males, their primary function completed, die shortly after mating. The inseminated queens drop to the g