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 hundreds of feet above the ground. When a colony loses its queen, the workers lose their normal aggressiveness toward newly mated queens and may adopt an unrelated newly mated queen after a mating flight. This is true for multiple-queen and single-queen colonies that have for some reason become queenless.
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.
