It hardly seems fair. She is an egg laying machine and it is the task of the rest of the colony to help her maximize her reproduction. One of the most common desert ants are the harvesters. These ants construct often enormous craters, sometimes two feet or more in diameter. They are cold blooded creatures, emerging when temperatures go above 60 degrees and move back underground when they top 111 degrees.
Harvester ants feed on seeds, which they gather in prodigious quantities.
Workers from one nest may gather 7,000 seeds a day. In one experiment it was found that harvester ants found considerable seeds from a plant species that hadn't produced seed in over a year. They are hardy, and readily attack other ants who intrude in their realm. After a good summer rain, it is not uncommon to find heaps of these ants wings from a sudden massive spate of reproduction.