A tribute to the labors of colony insects

If you hurry, you can get good seats for the parade today. Go to the woods, find a big mound of soil, crouch down and watch. Chances are you'll find an organized labor movement on the march. Ants are scurrying in line, up the mound, down the mound, to and fro, in and out.

Highly organized workers such as these are found among bees, wasps, and termites as well as ants. These represent eusocial organisms, groups of individuals which function as a whole. There may be tens of thousands of individuals in a eusocial colony. By divvying up their duties they act collectively as a superorganism and are able to accomplish super feats.

Eusociality is more than just a group of creatures that hang out together. Many gregarious animals form flocks, colonies, herds, and coveys, but congregating together does not make them truly social animals. In eusocial systems, all individuals are genetically related. Generations of these related individuals overlap such that a mother, her adult offspring and their offspring are all alive at the same time.

Eusocial animals also have a specialized communication system, such as the honeybee "waggle dance" alerting other bees to the location of the nearest nectar happy hour.

Another characteristic of eusocial systems is baby-sitting. Mom - rather, Grandma - doesn't have to take care of hundreds to thousands of offspring; she leaves it up to others.

Last but not least, eusocial systems are caste-based societies. And this is where our Labor Day workers come in.

In most eusocial insects, an unfertilized egg becomes a male, or drone. In this caste, the guys sit around and do nothing all their lives until it's time to mate with a female. If an egg is fertilized, however, it becomes a female. The new female can become either a queen or a worker.

The fate of this female is determined by the nutrition it receives as a larva. If fed a high sugar diet of a substance called royal jelly, she gets to be queen. The queen rules by pheromones and is waited on hand and foot. The queen's job, like the drone's, is pretty much lounging around and being fecund. And boy, is she ever! A honeybee queen cranks out some 1,500 to 3,000 eggs a day. An army ant queen produces a prodigious number of eggs as well - up to 300,000 eggs in a matter of days.

A female larva that is doled out a blander diet has a very different future. No royalty is in store for her. Instead of getting to be queen-for-a-day, she gets to be a worker her entire life - in fact, until she drops dead.

Among ants, the workers' first assignment is to attend to the queen's every need. She also must baby-sit the larvae. Next, she's assigned hard labor in the form of digging, nest repair and maintenance. She then is drafted into the army and joins the ranks of soldier ants that defend the colony from would-be marauders.

She must also assume responsibility for grocery shopping. Worker ants together forage for food and haul the goods back to the nest. Using just their mandibles, these indefatigable females can carry items up to 50 times their own weight. Not only do they have the strength of Hercules, they have endurance as well. Carpenter ant workers schlep groceries from a food source (like your kitchen) to the colony several hundred feet away. Proportional to our body size, this is like hauling 7,500 pounds of groceries several miles to your home.

Honeybee workers are a familiar sight in our gardens. These are the field workers of the colony. Honeybee workers may have several different assignments in the field. Some are gathering nectar, some are pollen shopping, and some are collecting water. Other workers are back home tending to the queen, making honey, creating wax comb, and feeding the larvae. Workers are also responsible for climate control in the hive. If the hive gets too warm or too cool, they use their wings to adjust the temperature to restore optimal conditions.

Workers may live only five to six weeks, depending on the type of insect. In their short life span they work diligently. Death comes to some worker bees in defense of the hive. When a worker bee delivers a blow to an enemy, her stinger and venom sac remain in the impaled victim. This presents a predicament for the bee, whose abdomen is ripped off as she leaves the scene. Thus dismembered, she soon expires, having sacrificed her life for the greater good of the colony.

In the world of wasps, workers are a formidable force to contend with this time of year. All summer yellow jackets and hornets have been tending to their queens, building their nests, and foraging for food. Come September, their numbers have burgeoned. Bald-faced hornet numbers peak at about 400, and some yellow jacket colonies may reach 5,000 individual wasps. That's a lot of mouths to feed!

With these huge colonies to provide for, wasp and hornet workers intensify their food-gathering efforts. They go for sweets, like juice, fruit, ice cream and pop. They also masticate meat. Thus, they like pretty much what we like at an outdoor event. They will invite themselves to your picnic and help themselves to your food.

If you protest the presence of these unwelcome guests, you do so at your own risk. Unlike bees who can only sting once, wasps can and do sting repeatedly at the least provocation. These gals are testy, fiercely protective of their kin, and they mean business.

Termites are eusocial insects with a slightly different way of going about things. Termite workers are both male and female. Their colony has both a queen and a king. Although blind and physically immature, workers are capable of finding suitable colony sites in wood, excavating and maintaining tunnels, constructing shelter tubes and galleries, tending to the other castes in the colony, and joining the armed forces when necessary.

And what does a termite worker get for all this hard labor? Not much, except more work assignments. The life of the working class is not easy.

We appreciate the labor performed by eusocial insects when it benefits us - such as pollinating our flowers and crops, making honey, and preying on other insects. We despise the work of other eusocial insects when it destroys our property - such as the wood tunneling carpenter ants and the wood-eating termites.

But there is something undeniably admirable about these worker bees, wasps, ants, and termites. They are paragons of organized labor, the embodiment of fortitude and esprit de corps. Keep an eye open for these industrious insect workers. And tip your hat to them in tribute to their labors on Labor Day.

• Valerie Blaine is a naturalist with the Forest Preserve District of Kane County. You may reach her at blainevalerie@kaneforest.com.