It was a lovely day in the meadow. The sun beat down bright and warm, just the kind of day ants loved to go out foraging for food and smelling the flowers. The meadow grass was tall and gave some shade from the hot sunshine, making it altogether a perfect day for a walk.
Honey was now a very old ant, but she still loved to get out of the nest and take a stroll around the meadow on days like this. Her best friend Buttercup decided to go with her, and so did a few of the older ants who were now too old to work well around the nest. Indeed, some were so old that they hobbled along at a very slow pace. Younger worker ants ran past the old ladies shouting "Come along you lot, you're moving at a snail's pace." "Don't be so impudent" retorted Honey to the younger workers, "You will be old and slow one day like we are, then you'll find it gets harder to rush about when your legs don't want to move as fast as your brain tells them to."
Lower down the field the farmer had just come through the gate on his tractor. He drove it up into the meadow and upon reaching the middle of the field, he connected his plough. It was high time he turned this meadow from a wild flower site into a proper working field he thought, and perhaps grow some wheat or barley in it. He switched on the motor and began to plough the field, churning up all the soil and destroying all the pretty wild flowers. "Stop Dad" yelled his son from the next field, "You're destroying a lot of protected plants species, and we cannot replace the wild flower meadow." But for the moment, his dad the farmer could not hear his son, and continued to carry on ploughing up the field. The nest of the black ant family which Honey belonged to was safe enough, as it was under a bush which the farmer had not yet reached. His son raced across the field in a mad dash and jumped in front of the tractor. The farmer stopped his ploughing and asked his son what the problem was. After hearing about the conservation of wild life from his son, he said "Well, if you put it like that my boy, I reckon we will just have to leave this meadow as it is." He always called his son "My Boy", even though his son was 37 years old with a wife and children of his own.
What the farmer did not realize was, that in jumping down heavily from his tractor to speak to his son, he had landed his huge size 10 Wellington boots smack bang on a group of tiny black ants; a group of very old tiny black ants, killing one of them in the process; and sadly that ant was Honey.
"What has happened to me" Honey said to herself, as she could no longer see Buttercup or the others. The sun still shone down, but the meadow somehow seemed strangely different to how it normally was. A beautiful golden bush glowed and shimmered like it was covered with spiders webs, and it had the most lovely smelling flowers Honey had ever smelled or could ever have imagined. Sitting on the topmost flower was a large queen ant. Her wings sparkled like droplets of early morning dew on a spider's web when the sun shone on them, and her body was all the colours of the rainbow. "Who are you?" asked Honey "I am the Ant Goddess, and this is Ant Heaven" replied the pretty looking queen ant. "How did I get here" said Honey, "as the last thing I remember was walking out across the meadow with my best friend Buttercup, and then it all went dark and now I'm here."
Meanwhile, back in the meadow the farmer had driven his tractor away, leaving some very old injured ants where his boots had been. "Is everyone alright" asked Buttercup, but then she saw that Honey had vanished. A number of younger worker ants came rushing up from the nest. When they too looked around the meadow, poor old Honey was nowhere to be found. "Oh whatever has become of her?" they all cried, and when they helped the old ants back into the nest, there was a great deal of weeping and wailing; and Queen Petal declared a day of mourning and that all work to be stopped in memory of her dear departed nurse ant, who had raised her from a small egg and had been like a mum to her. The nest would never be quite the same again without Honey, and Buttercup placed some honeydew and some pretty flowers in Honey's favourite resting spot in memory of her best friend.
"Ant Heaven is all very nice and looks a lovely place, but I can't hang around here all day" said Honey to the Ant Goddess, "I have work to do you know." "Do you really think that a dead ant needs to work my dear? It will be all play and no work from now on, as Ant Heaven is a place where no ants ever have to work again, and that's a promise" smiled the Goddess. "Well, I'm not that kind of ant" replied Honey, "So if you'll just send me back to join my friends, I will say thank you and be on my way." "Hmm, perhaps you may still have some life left in you Honey, as you seem like you're not yet ready to put your feet up and enjoy an eternity of rest and peace. Very well, you will be granted another life" the Ant Goddess said, "And I hope you enjoy it?" "Just an extention of my old life will do please" Honey said with a grin, "As I would like to rejoin my old friend Buttercup rather than start life all over again from the egg stage." "Then let it be so" said the Ant Goddess, and with a flutter of her shiny wings she flew down and touched Honey with her antennae.
In a flash Honey awoke to find herself under the sole of the farmers left boot, stuck to it by a bit of dried mud. She quickly pulled herself free and walked back through the farmyard, past the pigsty and the cowshed, past the tractor in the old barn where a barn owl hooted and screeched at her, past the farmer's sheepdog Bess who snored loudly in her kennel and went back into the meadow. It was the following day by the time Honey got near the nest, where some young worker ants out foraging found her, and one of them excitedly picked her up and carried her home to the nest. When she arrived she was greeted by ants of all ages and sizes, who cheered and cried with joy to see her again. "What on Earth happened to you?" asked Buttercup, who then added "Never mind, we're all so very glad to see you back safe and sound." "I had the most amazing adventure" replied Honey, "I had a dream that I was in Ant Heaven, or perhaps it wasn't a dream, who can say for sure; but I'm glad to be back, as there is no place like home." "I'll second that" said Buttercup with a smile, and the two old ants went off for a drink of nectar and chatted until they both fell asleep from exhaustion, which doesn't take that long when you are as old as Honey and Buttercup; and that's a fact.
THE END
Things were happening in the nest of Queen Ruby, as the red ants prepared for yet another wedding flight. Queen Ruby had 5 other daughter queens in her nest, and the youngest of these was Rose who was only 3 years old. It was Rose who had laid the egg that Rosebud hatched out from into a tiny larva, but like her other sisters and cousins in the red ant nest of Queen Ruby, she had soon grown up into a fine lovely Princess with long beautiful wings. Now it was time for Rosebud and the other 56 Princesses to fly away and find a mate on this big day when so many nests sent out their Princes and Princesses for their wedding flight. Excitedly they took to the air and headed up into the sunny sky across the meadow. Rosebud flew across the nest where Honey lived, and was surprised to see young flying ants of black, brown, red and yellow all rushing around below her. This was the time when many ant nests sent their winged sons and daughters out to begin new nests; it was a wonderful time for any ant with wings, as they would never fly again once the wedding flight was over.
Many winged ants became a meal for birds and hungry spiders that day, but some of the lucky new queen ants made it back to the ground safely. Rosebud was one of them; but she realised that she was a long way from her home in the meadow and would never make it home, so she knew she had to make a new nest for herself and begin a new colony. Looking around her she found herself at the top of a hill. This had a view for miles, but as ants have limited vision she could only see a small part of it. Rosebud began to remove her lovely wings which had carried her on her marriage flight and over the stone wall to this new place. She did not know it, but her home nest was only 2 fields away, but it might as well have been on the moon, as the distance for a small ant was much too far to walk back home. "I won't need these again" she said sadly as she tore off her wings. When she had done this she began to dig a hole in the soft soil. She had only dug down a few inches when a Yellow Meadow ant poked her head out next to Rosebud. "Clear off you, this is our nest" scolded the worker ant. "Sorry, but I need a nest site badly as I am a new queen ant" Rosebud replied. "Oh I didn't mean to sound so nasty, but perhaps you should try under that flat stone just over there, as no ants own it and it would make a fine nesting place for a young red ant queen like yourself" the yellow ant told her.
Rosebud thanked the worker ant and headed off to where she had been told to go. The flat stone was indeed a good spot for a nest. Not too big or too small, and warmed from the sun but still nice and moist underneath it; all in all the perfect place for her new home. A few woodlice and a worm lived under the stone, but no nasty insects that would harm her or her family. So Rosebud settled down into her home under the stone and laid a small clutch of 11 eggs.
Days passed and became weeks, until nearly 3 months had gone by. Three of the eggs had become pupae, but the other 8 were still larvae. Rosebud was by now very hungry, as she had been feeding 11 larvae on her own with no food coming into the nest. What a relief it was when finally 1 pupa suddenly began to wriggle, then got to its feet and said "hello, you must be my mother?" It was such a good feeling to have a daughter to help out, but it would still be awhile before the nest had enough worker ants to be able to send a few out to find food. Luckily they found a fly which had crawled under their stone to find somewhere to sleep away the oncoming winter, which was good thing as Rosebud was almost now hungry enough to eat her own larvae. Winter came and in the nest of Rosebud and her 1 worker daughter, and her brood of pupae and larvae, they all slept; but at least they had full stomachs from the meal the fly provided.
Spring came and suddenly Rosebud found herself with 7 daughters. Soon more and more food found its way into her nest under the stone, and she began to lay many more eggs. By the time Summer arrived the nest was busy, bustling with activity as worker ants brought in food, dug out more tunnels and chambers, and the eggs soon developed into yet more worker ants. It would be a few more years yet before this nest welcomed any new queens, but for now Rosebud was a successful mum with a nice healthy colony of red ants around her. No ant gave orders in the nest, not even Rosebud, as although she was the queen of the nest an ants motto was "Every ant is equal, no matter what her age or role in life"; and as each job came up, the ants did it without the need to be told. If a task needed to be done, the ants helped each other and did it happily and with enthusiasm, as each and every ant in the colony worked as if they were a team. No ant ever complained about the work, as it was necessary for the survival of any ant colony to work together as one big happy family; and that is how we all should be in life, just like Rosebud and her family, as if a jobs worth doing, it's worth doing well as she would tell you!
THE END
Another summer past into the month of August, and the red ant nest of Queen Ruby sent out another group of winged male and female ants, as did most of the other nests in the neighbourhood that belonged to closely related red ant families, many of which had been started by Queen Ruby's sisters or daughters; but as for the nest that Rosebud had founded, this was still too young to produce winged ants and would not do so for another year or so. Still, the sight of so many young princes and princesses taking to the air on a warm August afternoon was enough to take your breath away, as the sun flashed on their wings and lit up the rich orange red of their bodies, they caused such a spectacular vision to behold, such was the wonder of mother nature.
One young female had just mated high in the air and decided to look for a good nest site. She flew down toward the top of the hill on the far side of the meadow where her home had been, across the dry stone wall in the place the local humans called "The Hollins" which was a place of old limestone quarries and rich pasture for the farmer to graze his cows on. She suddenly felt her left wing get caught on the edge of a sticky spider's web. "This isn't good" she said aloud, as she could see the spider sitting in the middle of its web. Luckily a large fly also got stuck on the web, and the spider rushed off to grab this first, as being a small male spider, he didn't really fancy tackling the young ant queen until she was tired and worn out from her efforts to escape. So he busied himself with the fly instead.
This was the chance the young winged female ant had hoped for, as she twisted her body and her wing broke off from her body. She fell quite a long way from the web down to the ground, but the soft grass cushioned her fall and she landed safely, even if she was a bit shaken by her narrow escape from the clutches of the spider. Turning her head, she bit off her other wing. Well they were of no use any longer anyway, as she would never, ever fly again now that her wedding flight had been a success. "Now to look for a nice place to call home" she said, when she found herself surrounded by 3 red ant workers. They did not attack her though, as she feared they might have done. "You smell just like our own queen Rosebud does. Or almost like her" said one of the worker ants. "Come with us and maybe we can adopt you as a second queen?" another ant told her. When they all got back to the nest under the stone, the young queen was introduced to Rosebud.
"Hello, and where did you come from?" Rosebud asked. "I am from the nest of Queen Ruby, and my mother was Rose" the younger queen replied. "Then that makes you my young sister, what is your name?" Rosebud enquired. "I haven't had time to choose a name, so perhaps as my older sister you can pick one" she said. "I've got it, we will call you Rosehip" and all the worker ants agreed this was a lovely name for a sister of their Queen Rosebud to have. In time both Rosebud and Rosehip would have more young queens to join them, as they went on to produce many winged daughters and sons themselves; but that's another story in the life of an ant colony which has become as successful as Rosebud's nest has.
THE END
