How Long Do Ants Live? Workers, Queens and Colonies

“How long do ants live” has three answers depending on who you mean: the workers on your counter, the queen hidden in the nest, or the colony as a whole. The numbers differ by a factor of a hundred or more, and the gap is the reason ant control works the way it does. Every figure below comes from university extension services or published studies, named in the sources list.

Workers: weeks to a few years

Workers are sterile females, and they do all the visible work: foraging, nest building, defence and brood care. Their lifespan varies more between species than most people expect.

Fire ants

University of Florida entomologists give the clearest figures. Red imported fire ant workers come in sizes, and the bigger the worker, the longer she lives: minor workers 30 to 60 days, media workers 60 to 90 days and major workers 90 to 180 days. Going from egg to adult takes 22 to 38 days. A mature colony may hold as many as 240,000 workers, with a typical colony of about 80,000. With workers living weeks to months, the queen has to keep replacing them continuously just to hold the colony steady.

Carpenter ants

Carpenter ants sit at the other end. Rutgers Cooperative Extension states that each worker can live 4 to 5 years, although many do not live that long because of predators or human activity, and that eggs take about two months to become adults. NC State Extension notes that workers can live many years. If you have carpenter ants in a house, the individual ants you see may be years old.

Odorous house ants

The small, dark ants usually called sugar ants in the eastern US are often odorous house ants (see which ants sugar ants really are). Utah State University Extension says adult queens and workers can live for several years. Colonies have many queens and spread by budding, so there is rarely a single queen whose death would end an infestation.

Why the ants you see are the ones that die first

Ants divide work by risk. In weaver ants, a study by Chapuisat and Keller found that minor workers, which stay inside the protected nest, lived significantly longer than major workers, which do the risky work outside, even when both were kept in a protected lab. The foragers on your kitchen floor are the colony’s most expendable members.

Queens: years to decades

Ant queens are among the longest lived insects known. A 2005 review by Jemielity, Chapuisat, Parker and Keller notes that queen lifespan can reach nearly 30 years in some ant species, over 100 times the average lifespan of solitary insects, and that queens can live up to 500 times longer than males and 10 times longer than workers.

The University of Florida Book of Insect Records names a black garden ant (Lasius niger) queen as the holder of the longest recorded adult life of any insect: 28¾ years in captivity, kept by the entomologist Hermann Appel. Lab colonies of the same species had queens living from 18 to 29 years. The other candidate is a western harvester ant, Pogonomyrmex owyheei, whose queens were estimated to live 14 to 30 years in the field, based on how long colony mounds stayed active in southern Idaho.

Carpenter ant queens can live as long as 15 years, according to both Rutgers and NC State. Fire ant queens are shorter lived at two to six years, but University of Florida entomologists note that a fire ant queen can produce as many as 1,500 eggs a day.

Males

Male ants exist only to mate. University of Florida and Rutgers both state that males die soon after mating. The winged ants you see in a spring swarm are a one way trip for the males and the start of a new colony for the few queens that survive.

How long does an ant colony live?

A colony lasts roughly as long as its queen or queens keep laying. The Book of Insect Records summarises colonies with one queen as living 5 to 30 years once established, while noting that most do not survive nearly as long in the field because of competition, predation, pathogens and habitat change. A long term study of red harvester ants by Deborah Gordon’s group, with data collected since 1985, tracked a population of about 265 colonies and describes a colony lifespan of 25 to 30 years.

Carpenter ants show why a colony in a house is a slow problem. Rutgers says a new colony needs 3 to 6 years to mature and begin producing 200 to 400 winged swarmers a year; NC State says mature colonies hold 2,000 to 3,000 workers. Winged carpenter ants indoors therefore point to an established colony, years old, nesting in or close to the structure. Our carpenter ant guide covers finding it.

How long do ants live without food?

Not long when they are separated from the colony, and the numbers are thin. In lab work at South China Agricultural University’s fire ant research centre, fire ant workers removed from their colony and kept singly or in groups of ten with sugar water had all died by almost 30 days; with only water the experiment lasted 8 days, and with neither water nor sugar 2 days. That study is a preprint and was designed to test isolation, not starvation, so treat the figures as indicative.

Isolation itself shortens life. Koto, Mersch, Hollis and Keller found in 2015 that carpenter ant workers kept alone had a greatly reduced lifespan compared with ants kept in groups of ten, because isolated ants held food in their crop instead of using it. A lone ant stranded in a car or a closed room is unlikely to last long.

How long do ants live without a queen?

A colony that loses its only queen cannot replace its workers, so it dies out as they do. The clearest evidence comes from fire ant baits. University of Tennessee and Tennessee State University entomologists explain that insect growth regulator baits sterilise the queen rather than killing workers, which must die naturally. Their table lists substantial colony mortality at about 4 to 10 weeks for these baits, which lines up with fire ant worker lifespans of 30 to 180 days. Texas A&M AgriLife, measuring full control in lawns, gives 2 to 6 months for growth regulator baits and 2 to 4 weeks for the fastest baits.

Species with many queens are harder still. Odorous house ant colonies have multiple egg laying queens and can split into new nests, so losing one queen changes little. That is why the University of Kentucky says the mistake most people make is only spraying the ants they see, which is only a small portion of the colony.

How long do ants live in a house?

As long as their colony does, which can be years. Utah State University notes that odorous house ants retreat to a few overwintering nests in winter and bud into many nests again by summer, and that they forage at temperatures between 43 and 95°F. Indoors, warm walls and slab cracks keep conditions inside that range all year.

Our analysis of iNaturalist records shows the outdoor rhythm. Carpenter ant and odorous house ant sightings rise from March and peak in spring and early summer: odorous house ants from March to May, carpenter ants in May and June. Fire ants look different because they are confined to the South, where they stay visible through mild winters; their index climbs in winter mainly because records of other insects nationwide fall away. Note too that these are sightings, mostly outdoors, not counts of indoor infestations.

What this means for getting rid of ants

• Identify the ant first. Lifespan, colony size and queen number all depend on species; our ant identification guide shows the four that matter most.
• Bait, then wait. Kentucky’s extension advice is to expect more ants at the bait at first and not spray them; activity usually subsides in a few days as the colony declines. Growth regulator baits take weeks, set by worker lifespan.
• Do not spray around baits. Kentucky warns that sprays and cleaners near bait placements may deter ants from feeding, and Utah State notes repellent sprays can split colonies.
• Treat fire ants by the label. If you live in a quarantine area, see our fire ant quarantine guide for rules on moving soil and plants.
• Call a professional for carpenter ants in structural wood, or for colonies you cannot find. A colony that took years to build will not disappear in a weekend.

Ants also follow a daily rhythm. Carpenter ants forage mostly at night, and fire ant workers take hundreds of short naps a day; our article on whether ants sleep covers what researchers have measured.

Frequently asked questions

What is the lifespan of a house ant?

It depends on the species. Odorous house ant queens and workers can live for several years, according to Utah State University Extension. Carpenter ant workers can live up to 4 to 5 years and queens up to 15, per Rutgers. Fire ant workers live 30 to 180 days depending on size, and their queens two to six years. In every case the colony outlives the individual ants you see.

Why should you not squish ants?

Because it does not solve anything. University of Kentucky entomologists say the ants seen foraging are only a small portion of the colony, with thousands more and one or more queens hidden in the nest. Squashing foragers removes the shortest lived, most expendable workers. Odorous house ants also give off a rotten coconut smell when crushed. Baits that workers carry home are far more effective.

Will ants eventually go away on their own?

Seasonally, yes; permanently, rarely. Outdoor foraging slows in cold weather, and odorous house ants shrink into a few overwintering nests, but the colony survives and buds again in spring. Colonies live for years: carpenter ant colonies take 3 to 6 years just to mature, and harvester ant colonies can last decades. Without baiting or removing the nest, ants usually return.

What is an ant’s worst enemy?

There is no single one. The University of Florida Book of Insect Records notes that most colonies die well short of their potential lifespan because of competition, predation, pathogens and habitat change. For fire ants, tiny phorid flies are a notable enemy: the fly’s larva develops inside a worker’s head, which usually falls off. Several species have been released in the US since 1997 for biological control, and their presence disrupts fire ant foraging.

Sources

• University of Florida IFAS Featured Creatures EENY-195, Red Imported Fire Ant, Collins and Scheffrahn.
• Rutgers Cooperative Extension FS1101, Carpenter Ants and Their Control, 2019.
• NC State Extension, Biology and Control of Carpenter Ants, Crawley and Hayes, reviewed 2023.
• Utah State University Extension, Odorous House Ants, Davis and Taylor, 2019.
• University of Kentucky Entomology ENTFACT-619, Ant Control for Householders, Potter.
• Cetintas, Longest Adult Life, University of Florida Book of Insect Records, chapter 34, 1998 (citing Kutter and Stumper 1969 and Porter and Jorgensen 1988).
• Jemielity, Chapuisat, Parker and Keller, Long live the queen: studying aging in social insects, Age 27, 2005.
• Chapuisat and Keller, Division of labour influences the rate of ageing in weaver ant workers, Proceedings of the Royal Society B, 2002.
• Ingram, Pilko, Heer and Gordon, Colony life history and lifetime reproductive success of red harvester ant colonies, Journal of Animal Ecology, 2013.
• Koto, Mersch, Hollis and Keller, Social isolation causes mortality by disrupting energy homeostasis in ants, Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology 69, 2015.
• Wang, Xu, Di and Roehner, How does group interaction and its severance affect life expectancy?, arXiv preprint 1304.2935, 2013.
• Merchant, Texas AgriLife Extension L-5070, the Two-Step Method for fire ant control.
• Oliver, Ochieng, Vail, Youssef and Halcomb, Imported Fire Ant Control in Production Nurseries With Baits, University of Tennessee and Tennessee State University SACS 20101, 2010.
• McCorquodale, Cuda and Porter, Fire Ant Decapitating Flies, UF/IFAS EENY-680, 2017.
• The Pest Control Brief analysis of iNaturalist research grade records, pulled October 2026.