The fire ant workers cannot produce a new queen, but they can adopt a newly mated queen. New queens are produced after a mating flight, which takes place several hundred to 1,000 feet above the ground. When a colony loses its queen, the workers quickly lose their normal aggressiveness toward newly mated queens and may adopt an unrelated newly mated queen from a mating flight. This is true for multiple-queen and single-queen colonies that have for some reason become queenless. FYI, Multiple-queen colonies that already have a queen(s) can adopt a portion of newly mated queens that are genetically compatible. However, workers from single-queen colonies that already have a queen will kill all newly mated queens that they encounter.