The New Home.
Like the mother wasp, the ant works on her nest until enough ants grow up to do all the work. After that, like the queen bee, she does no work. The work ants will not allow her to go from home.[4]
Sappers and Miners.
When the ant finds a place for her home, how does she take off her wings? They would be in her way while she worked. She presses the edge of a wing upon the ground and so pushes it up and loosens the hook, just as you unhook a dress. Then she begins to dig. She acts at first much as your dog does when he digs after a chipmunk or a rabbit.
The ant lays her big head close to the ground. With her fore-feet she digs up the soil, and tosses it back between her hind legs. She digs as her cousin, Mrs. Wasp, digs.
Sappers and Miners.
She keeps waving her little feelers, as if to find out the kind of soil. Soon she has a hole deep enough to cover her body. It is too deep for her to throw out the dirt with her feet. Now she uses her feet, and her jaws, also, to dig with.
Where the soil is sandy, she takes it out, grain by grain. At first, she must back out of her hole. Soon her hall-way is so wide that she can turn about after she has backed a few steps.