colony · mound · tunnel · chamber · queen
Fire ants build their home underground. The small hill of dirt on the surface is called a mound. Under the mound, there is a large nest. The nest is the home of a colony of up to 250,000 ants. Inside the nest, there are many tunnels and small rooms called chambers. The queen ant lives in the nest and lays up to 1,500 eggs every day. Worker ants carry the baby ants through the tunnels to warm chambers near the top of the mound. Special ants called foragers use long tunnels to search for food outside. When the colony needs to move, the ants can build a whole new nest in just a few days.