How Long Do Ants Live? Workers, Males and Long-Lived Queens

Ant lifespans at a glance

Every ant colony has three main kinds of adult: queens, workers and males. They share the same genes for long life, yet their lifespans differ enormously.

These figures are for adults. Before that, each ant spends weeks to months as an egg, larva and pupa, depending on species and temperature.

Queens: among the longest-lived insects

Ant queens hold the lifespan records among insects. The best-known record comes from a black garden ant (Lasius niger) queen kept in a laboratory nest by the ant researchers Heinrich Kutter and Robert Stumper. She lived about 28¾ years, reported in 1969.

In the wild, long lives are harder to measure, because a queen lives hidden deep in her nest. Researchers studying harvester ants in the western United States estimated that some colonies, and the queens that founded them, last around 30 years. Queens of leafcutter ants are thought to live 10–20 years.

A 1997 study in Nature by Laurent Keller and Michel Genoud compared ants with other insects and found that ant queens live on average about 100 times longer than solitary insects of similar size.

Workers: weeks to years

Worker ants live much shorter lives than queens, even though they are female and develop from the same kind of eggs. Their lifespan depends on species, size, temperature and the work they do.

In many ants, young workers stay inside the nest caring for the queen and brood. As they age, they move to riskier jobs such as nest defense and foraging. Foragers face predators, weather and accidents, so most die sooner than workers that stay at home. This division of labor means the colony places its oldest workers, with the least life left, in the most dangerous roles.

Workers of the small red imported fire ant may live only weeks to a few months, while workers of many European and North American ants, kept in the lab, live one to three years. Workers of the red wood ant live up to about a year or two.

Males: a short life with one job

Male ants develop from unfertilized eggs and have wings. They are raised only when a colony is mature, and they leave the nest on the mating flight. Males do no work in the colony and usually die within days or weeks after mating. Their adult lives are the shortest of any ant caste.

Why do queens live so long?

Scientists explain long queen lives with evolution. Animals that face a high risk of being killed by predators or accidents tend to evolve fast lives and short lifespans, because investing in a long life rarely pays off. A queen lives safely deep in the nest, guarded and fed by thousands of workers, so her risk of an early death is low. Over millions of years, natural selection has favored queens that stay healthy and keep laying eggs for many years.

Queens are also physiologically different. Researchers have found differences in hormone signaling, cell repair and energy use between queens and workers of the same species. Ants are now studied by scientists interested in aging, because queens and workers with almost identical genes age at such different rates.

What shortens an ant’s life in the wild?

Most ants never reach their maximum possible age. Foraging workers are eaten by birds, spiders, lizards and other ants, crushed, drowned in rain or lost far from the nest. Parasites, such as fungi and tiny flies that lay eggs in ants, take a further toll.

Young queens face the greatest danger of all. After the mating flight, thousands of new queens are snapped up by birds and dragonflies or die before their first workers hatch. Only a tiny fraction survive to found a colony, but those that do may then live for many years.

Temperature matters too. Ants are cold-blooded, so in warm climates they develop and age faster, while in cool regions they spend winter dormant deep in the nest, which slows their lives down.

Ant colonies: older than the ants

A colony can outlive its individual workers many times over. In single-queen species, the colony lasts as long as the queen, constantly replacing workers. When she dies, no more workers are produced and the colony fades away.

Colonies with many queens can last longer still. Red wood ant colonies adopt new queens and spread across several linked mounds, so a colony can persist for decades. Bees and termites show similar patterns; compare how long do bees live? and do termites have a queen?

Myths and facts

Myth: All ants live only a few weeks. Fact: Males and some workers live only weeks, but many workers live for a year or more, and queens can live for decades.