encountered upon arrival at the lake, and the one on which he had taken the most notes in earlier years. Naming it the Trailhead Colony, Raff decided to make it the prototype for his thesis studies. He chose wisely to record its habits and social behavior as thoroughly as possible without digging it up or disturbing it in any other way. Needham suggested further that these observations would serve as a baseline for later studies, including those of other colonies scattered over Dead Owl Cove. A more nearly complete picture might then be drawn for the whole species.
Among Raff's earliest childhood memories was the Trailhead Colony as a dominant presence in the open space of the picnic area. On every warm rainless day, its foragers patrolled ten yards or more from the nest mound. And several times an hour, some of them returned to the nest entrance bearing various fresh prey, fragments of scavenged dead insects, nectar from plants, and the sugary excrement of sap-sucking insects.
When Raff began a more than casual study late in the previous year before coming to Florida State University, he noticed that the activity of the Trailhead Colony had declined sharply from the high intensity of its past. Many fewer foragers ventured out of the nest, and proportionately less food was coming in. When Raff went so far as to prod the mound surface with a trowel, only a small number of defenders rushed out to mount a defense. Something was wrong with the mighty Trailhead Colony.
"I think it's sick, and it's getting worse," he said at a Bug Bash, "and I have no idea why."
Bill Needham nodded. "Sounds like the queen has died on you. No queen, no eggs, no more larvae. The colony doesn't need as much food, so the workers are staying at home. Sort of like old folks at a retirement community."
"But why should the whole colony quit like that?" Raff said. "Are they having a memorial service or something?" That brought approving laughter from the Bashers, a rare tribute to a beginner like Raff.
"Well," Needham said, "you've got to understand what a powerful stimulus a queen is to all the workers. When she goes, they're less responsive. Something goes out of their spirit--so to speak."
Circling an index finger in the air, as he often did when he was about to introduce a new idea, Needham asked, "How long have you been watching that colony anyway?"
"Well, believe it or not," Raff replied, "since I was a little kid, I'd say ten years or so. It's hard to miss when you first get to the trailhead."
Needham reached for a volume on the shelf next to his desk, searched the index, opened to a page, and pointed to an entry. He said, "That's no surprise. In ants similar to your species, we have records of the mother queen living over twenty years."
"Twenty years? That's older than I am."
"Yep. I'll admit that's an amazing life-span for an insect," Needham said. "It's longer even than for the seventeen-year locust. But it does occur in the queens of a few kinds of ants. My guess is that it's a world record for insects. On the other hand, very few of the workers live more than two or three years. That's true even though they're all the queen's daughters, and all have her same heredity. Now, that's a real strange situation. Longer than that must seem like an eternity for them. They exist, you might say, in a mental world that's got no beginning or end. They have no concept of their mother queen dying. She's just always there. Even when it finally happens, even the retinue that takes care of the old girl doesn't realize at first that she's dead. I suggest you keep a close eye on that colony."
The death of the Queen was to have consequences critical to the fate of the Dead Owl Cove ants, across the five seasons their history was recorded by Raphael Semmes Cody. For that reason Needham and I chose to place this event at the opening of the Anthill Chronicles.
The Anthill Chronicles
19
IT WAS TRUE. The Trailhead Queen was dead.
In the first days there had been no overt sign that her long life had ended. There was no fever, there were no spasms, no farewells. She simply sat on the floor of the royal chamber and quietly died. As in life, her body was prone and immobile, her legs and antennae relaxed. Her stillness by itself failed to give