Lasius fuliginosus - exposed - closeup, Heesch, Netherlands

A closeup of a group of ants immediately after I exposed their nest, which was situated under and inside a rotten log.

I normally don't intervene with nature much on my hikes, meaning I don't do a lot of digging or turning over things. Yet on this day I saw a very rotten trunk stuck to the forest floor, so I tipped it over with my shoe, to see if perhaps some woodlice or beetles were below it. To my shock (and yes I felt guilty about it) I exposed a large ant colony and partly destroyed their carefully crafted tunnel system. So let us use my brutality to document about the species what we can.

Ants seemingly don't waste a lot of time complaining about this external event, because the very second they were exposed, hundreds were frantically moving, each knowing exactly what to do next: secure the offspring. In this opening scene you get an overview, yet it doesn't show everything. Faintly in the back you see white larvae but there's more rooms to show.

Start of this sequence:

Closeup of the immediate response:

There's more to the nest, a side view shows a nursery holding the larvae:

Taking a step back, we see multiple of such rooms:

And even a pupa room:

Hundreds of ants, if not thousands. Multiple rooms with larvae, at least one visible room with pupas. Cleaned up in minutes, not a single ant, larvae or pupa in sight, as if nothing happened:

Some individuals: