For example can a Queen Bee or Termite be born to a bee or termite? Or do the parents have to be Queen and King? Or can only Queens lay eggs??
In: Biology
With ants, only the Queens and males (drones) are fertile. The vast majority of ants – workers, soldiers, etc – are infertile females and cannot become fertile later in life.
Young Queens and Drones have wings and leave the nest in a ‘nuptial flight’ where they fly out en-mass, find a suitable mate, hopefully from a different colony, and bang it out. The Drones (males) then die, and the New Queen finds a suitable spot to dig a hole and start a new colony.
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